"Representatives of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs apologized to college students waiting on their delayed checks to pay the rent and buy textbooks and said they are taking a number of steps to try to speed up the process," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. "'I am here to say we are sorry,' Tammy Duckworth, the assistant VA secretary, said at an event Monday afternoon at the University of Missouri at St. Louis about the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. In recent months, the department has been inundated with more than 290,000 applications for the new program, which took effect in August. The new GI Bill has often been described as the largest extension of veteran educational benefits since the original GI Bill was signed into law in 1944. To help cope with the backlog, Duckworth said, the department has hired 700 people to help process claims, increased communication with colleges and paid out more than $175 million in $3,000 emergency checks for veterans who have not received payments."