{"id":12486,"date":"2007-08-09T14:15:12","date_gmt":"2007-08-09T18:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12486.html"},"modified":"2007-08-09T14:15:12","modified_gmt":"2007-08-09T18:15:12","slug":"dems-want-to-boost-gi-bill-pro-military-bush-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/dems-want-to-boost-gi-bill-pro-military-bush-doesnt\/","title":{"rendered":"Dems want to boost GI Bill, ‘pro-military’ Bush doesn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, congressional Dems and the Bush White House fought over whether to give U.S. troops a pay increase for 2008. Dems fought for a 3.5% raise, Bush insisted that was too generous<\/a>. The “pro-military” president thought the troops could get by with less.<\/p>\n

This month, congressional Dems and the Bush White House are at it again<\/a>, this time over educational benefits for those who wear the uniform. Take a wild guess who wants to do more for the troops.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration opposes a Democratic effort to restore full educational benefits for returning veterans, according to an official’s comments last week.<\/p>\n

Senate Democrats, led by Virginia’s Jim Webb, want the government to pay every penny of veterans’ educational costs, from tuition at a public university to books, housing and a monthly stipend.<\/p>\n

Such a benefit was a major feature of the historic 1944 G.I. Bill, which put more than eight million U.S. soldiers through college and is now credited by historians as fueling the expansion of America’s middle class in the post-war era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The G.I. Bill has been neglected in recent years, and with no lengthy wars with major troop deployments in decades, there’s been minimal political pressure to keep the education benefits at full-strength. As of now, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can expect the federal government to cover only 75% of their tuition costs.<\/p>\n

Dems and veterans’ advocates believe that’s not enough. The Bush administration is unmoved.
\n<\/p>\n

More than 450,000 used the benefit last year, at a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which administers the program. The Democratic proposal would cost an additional $5.4 billion a year, the VA estimates — and that’s too much, it says.<\/p>\n

Keith Wilson, the VA official who oversees the education benefits program, told senators last Friday the proposal would make “administration of this program cumbersome,” and its costs would “tax existing VA resources.”<\/p>\n

But Democrats appeared unfazed. The current GI Bill is “woefully inadequate, given the service our military men and women have provided since [the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks],” said Webb, a combat veteran and former Navy secretary, who introduced the legislation that would expand the program. Webb’s bill has 19 Democratic co-sponsors, including Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and John Kerry, D-Mass., a fellow veteran.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, unless you believe the troops should stay in the middle of Iraq’s civil war, you don’t really<\/i> support the troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, congressional Dems and the Bush White House fought over whether to give U.S. troops a pay increase for 2008. Dems fought for a 3.5% raise, Bush insisted that was too generous. The “pro-military” president thought the troops could get by with less. This month, congressional Dems and the Bush White House are at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}