Luke Messer: “I appreciate the chairman and his extraordinary leadership on this important topic. I rise today to urge support for…”

“I appreciate the chairman and his extraordinary leadership on this important topic. I rise today to urge support for this broad, bipartisan reform package which expands and modernizes the GI Bill to better serve our military families. The bill includes a bipartisan proposal that I have worked on with Congressman Mark Takano of California to help veteran students impacted by school closures, like ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges, based in our home States. When ITT Tech abruptly closed its doors, 40,000 students nationwide, including 7,000 veterans, were left without a degree or path forward. Jason Nyikos, a U.S. Navy veteran from Greenfield, Indiana, in my district, had to start his degree completely from scratch after spending 2 years at ITT Tech. Not a single credit transferred, and his GI Bill is going to run out before he can get a new degree. He told my office: ``To spend 2 years of my life at a place with nothing to show for it is one of the biggest disappointments.'' Jason's story is, sadly, one of thousands. It is not fair to these veterans that they would lose their GI benefits through no fault of their own, and if we really care, we need to do something about it. The Takano-Messer proposal restores GI Bill benefits to veterans who were attending ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges when they closed so they can earn their degrees elsewhere. It also helps veterans who may be impacted by a school closure in the future.…”