Sen. Webb (D) New GI Bill Passes House

The New GI Bill championed by VA Sen. Jim Webb (D) has been passed by the House of Representatives and is expected to be approved by the Senate in the coming weeks.  Despite opposition from local Republicans Frank Wolfe and Tom Davis, the legislation sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D) and forty others on both sides of the aisle received overwhelming support from legislators and veteran organizations. 

The legislation will strengthen educational benefits available to veterans who have served in the post-911 military.  New GI Bill PDF.

See excellent CQ Politics post on how John McCain and Senate Republicans failed in their attempt to quash Sen. Webb's New GI Bill with a "last train out of the station" amendment on collective bargaining. 

h/t Raising Kaine

Comments

[J. Tyler Ballance]

I worked for Jim Webb when he was SECNAV, but had I been in Congress, I would not have voted for his GI Bill.

I wrote to him and talked with his staff in advance of this Bill going to Committee. I pointed out that our military personnel, when they volunteer to join, do not sign up for a particular war, or join only for times of peace. They volunteer to serve, no matter what happens.

Given that we are supposed to all be equal under the law, why then would anyone promote a bill, including a GI Bill that treats the veterans of one era, differently than those who served in other eras?

What we should have is a GI Bill that is uniform all across the various political eras, and as changes are made, those changes must apply to all veterans, much like Social Security or other group compensation or medical programs.

To be specific, veterans who joined just at the end of the Vietnam era got no education benefits at all. There was a lousy pay-in program that wouldn't fund a semester at most colleges. This program is known as VEAP and it manifested the contempt America felt toward the military during the post-Vietnam years. Later, when the "Montgomery GI Bill" was ushered in, those benefits of that program were not "grandfathered" to the VEAP veterans, unless the soldier had been foolish enough to invest in the patently bad VEAP accounts. As a consequence of having different programs for different eras of enlistment, we have soldiers who serve alongside one another where some have a good benefits package, while others have a lesser one and in the case of the VEAP era, no benefits at all.

No union, not even the federal government has workers in the same jobs, expected to work alongside others with wholly different benefits packages.

Jim Webb has at least made a try to help the Vets, but we need to have a GI Bill that applies uniformly to all veterans, regardless of the era in which they served. They didn't pick their war, so we should not reward or punish them based on what happened during their eras of service to our country.

[Mike@Blueweeds]

JT - Thanks for the excellent comment. My understanding is the current bill is designed to provide educational benefits for post-911 veterans which are on par with WWII-era GI bill benefits. Your information about the gap which exists for Vietnam-era veterans is illuminating ... and I agree that a system of uniform benefits regardless of era of service would be better. If for no other reason than it would help reduce any possibility of a political stigma associated with service in a particular era.