Expanded GI bill long overdue

Includes provision backed vigorously by Sen. John Cornyn

Austin American-Statesman
July 3, 2008

Forced by Congress, President Bush signed a bill this week that includes a landmark and long overdue expansion of educational benefits for the nation's newest generation of military veterans. It will be expensive, about $62.8 billion over the next 11 years, but the veterans earned every nickel of it - and more.

The bill, whose lead author is a Marine Corps veteran and Democrat from Virginia, Sen. James Webb, applies to all members of the military - including National Guard and reserve units - who have been on active duty for at least three and up to 36 months since Sept. 11, 2001. Veterans would have up to 15 years to make use of however much of the benefits they have earned.

The principal virtue of the Webb bill is that it goes much further than its predecessor, the Montgomery GI Bill, in covering the cost of higher education for veterans. The new bill will compensate a veteran in college for an amount up to the total of tuition and fees at the most expensive in-state public university in his or her state - plus a monthly stipend for housing.

In addition, the bill has an incentive for private universities to trim their higher tuition bills for veterans. And the bill would provide payments for tutors and license and certification tests. A provision backed vigorously by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and others will allow a veteran to transfer his or her educational benefits to a spouse or children.

President Bush and many in the Pentagon resisted the generosity of these benefits. There is worry that the expanded benefits will give active duty troops a powerful incentive to leave when their enlistments are up rather than re-enlist - and the Army, especially, is already stretched tight because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the House and Senate rightly overrode that retention concern. The greater benefits might attract more qualified recruits to the armed services. Even if they don't, troops who already have volunteered and served shouldn't be played for suckers and told, "Sorry, we can't offer to fully compensate you for your devotion and sacrifice because you might actually want to collect."

The president backed off his administration's resistance to the expanded benefits when Congress, in decisive bipartisan votes, included them in a larger, $257.5 billion bill to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Webb has argued that the education of our veterans is a cost of war, and he's absolutely right. All sorts of corporations, including some in Texas, have reaped billions of dollars from the war. The small number of Americans willing to actually fight in that war deserve a few billion of their own - and the best part is that, in the long run, the nation will benefit from their higher education, too.