Congress working to help dependents of Purple Heart recipients get GI benefits for college tuition

WASHINGTON — There’s a new push in U.S. Congress that would help the dependents of Purple Heart recipients pay for college tuition.

Channel 2′s Washington Correspondent Candice Cole was in Washington with the details on how this will help veterans’ families.

The bipartisan effort is meant to ensure that the GI benefits of veterans who received a Purple Heart after their time in the military don’t go to waste.

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Senators Patty Murray (D-Washington) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) introduced the Purple Heart Veterans Education Act to allow dependents of all Purple Heart honorees to take advantage of the GI bill when paying for college.

If it passes, the legislation would fix the Isakson and Roe Act, which went into law in 2021, that only allows active duty Purple Heart recipients to transfer the education benefit to their dependents.

“This piece of legislation will actually close that loophole of forgetting those who received their Purple Heart after they exited military service,” Shane Liermann, Deputy National Legislative Director for Benefits of the Disabled American Veterans, said.

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The bill would apply to those Purple Heart recipients who were awarded on or after Sept. 11, 2001.

It would also allow them to transfer the GI bill benefits to more than one dependent and set aside different amounts to be used within 36 months.

“There are thousands of veterans who do get their Purple Heart awarded after military service for a variety of reasons,” Liermann told Channel 2 Action News. “I think this will impact thousands of veterans and their families.”

Congress initially passed the Forever GI Bill in 2017 as an incentive to encourage service members to extend their time in the military.

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