Select Committee on Veterans' Affairs
Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee
Appropriations Committee
AN ACT CONCERNING ELIGIBILITY FOR BENEFITS FOR VETERANS IN SERVICE IN TIME OF WAR
SUMMARY: This act expands the pool of people eligible for veterans' war service benefits by changing the start and end dates of Operation Earnest Will (escort of Kuwaiti oil tankers flying the U. S. flag in the Persian Gulf). The benefits include property tax exemptions; public college tuition waivers; and financial help from the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Fund.
The act also specifies that the 90 days qualifying war service required for benefit eligibility do not have to be consecutive, by defining “service in time of war” as “ninety or more cumulative days,” instead of “ninety or more days,” in statutorily specified wars or operations. By law, unchanged by the act, a veteran does not have to meet the 90-day requirement if he or she (1) left the service earlier because of a service-connected disability or (2) served for the duration of a war or operation that lasted less than 90 days.
EFFECTIVE DATE: Upon passage
OPERATION EARNEST WILL
Under prior law, the dates of this operation were February 1, 1987 to July 23, 1987. The act corrects and sets the dates as July 24, 1987 to August 1, 1990 to conform to Department of Defense regulations (32 CFR § 578. 25). It thus increases the defined length of the operation from approximately six months to 36 months. But it also eliminates pre- July 24, 1987 service as qualifying service for this operation.
OLR Tracking: VR: DD: PF: TS