I enlisted in March '75. I served four years of active duty in the USMC. So I was one of the last to enlist under the Vietnam Veterans benefits package.
The contractual promise made to me regarding college benefits was for payments of about $450 a month, for 12 months a year, for a maximum of five years, for periods that I attended college full time.
I only received one year of such payments. After that, my benefits were cut every semester. By my fourth year of attending college full time, I received less than 10 cents on the dollar promised. The government got away with this because there were very few of us under this benefits package at that time, and we were hated by a majority of the population.
In fact, while in my fifth year in college, I actually received a "Thanks for donating your benefits to help balance the Budget" letter. As if I had asked to do that.
So, like a lot of people cheated by the federal govt., I'd also like to receive my reparations. And I'm not a fourth generation descendant. I'm the person that was screwed. But I doubt that Conyers, or anyone else, is going to raise that issue.
I'm just saying that former slaves in 1870 are hardly the only folks that were ever shorted by our federal govt.
I feel your pain, I enlisted in July 1975, served eleven years,got booted out without so much as a thank you for serving as part of a budget cut, only to find out that by the time I could get into a decent college any benefits I was due towards it would run out.