Gates gets it
Defense Secretary Gates held a town meeting at Fort Riley, Kansas, yesterday. He’s smart enough to know that many military spouses are no longer afraid to speak out, and savvy enough to invite them to begin by making it clear that it was okay to do so: I sometimes feel like I live in a ...
Defense Secretary Gates held a town meeting at Fort Riley, Kansas, yesterday. He's smart enough to know that many military spouses are no longer afraid to speak out, and savvy enough to invite them to begin by making it clear that it was okay to do so:
Defense Secretary Gates held a town meeting at Fort Riley, Kansas, yesterday. He’s smart enough to know that many military spouses are no longer afraid to speak out, and savvy enough to invite them to begin by making it clear that it was okay to do so:
I sometimes feel like I live in a parallel universe. I sit through these briefings at the Pentagon, where I learn all about these great things that the Department of Defense is doing when it comes to family programs. But when I visit a base or a post and actually talk to military families, I sometimes hear a different story.
Sure enough, the first question was about the Pentagon offering tuition assistance to military spouses and then pulling the plug on the program. He made it clear that he was involved in dealing with this mess:
So we’ve been looking at the program. And I would tell you that I’m going to have a couple more meetings on it this week, this coming week. But within the next week or two, I expect we will be able to reopen the program to new applicants. And we are looking at a budget somewhere on the order of $500 million to — and we’re going — we’re going to have to do some things in terms of some caps and some limits, to be able to help as many people as possible. But I expect within the next two weeks we’ll reopen the program, with a substantial increase in the funding.
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