[Updated]

I didn’t join the Marines for, or leave because of my education. I joined to serve my country and test my mettle. But like many veterans, when I left the service I decided to go to school- enrolling in an MBA program part-time while starting my new job. I later switched to full time in an accelerated program.

In 18 months, I spent over $37,000 in tuition and related costs. But because my program was accelerated, when the VA pro-rated my GI Bill (MGIB) stipend based on credits and class length only, the payments still couldn’t keep up with my class schedule. Due to the complicated and inflexible policies of the current MGIB, I received an average of $850 per month for my program when actual costs were several thousand dollars- when I graduated, I still had over $21,000 in student loans hanging over my head. I had never expected the government to pay for the entire degree, but the inflexibility of the program and the modesty of the payments seemed incongruous with the ultra-flexible, 110% troop welfare mantra I had learned in the service.


After World War II, thousands of returning veterans were given the opportunity to go to college with the MGIB (known then as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944). This ushered in decades of American ingenuity as returning soldiers joined the work force with leadership skills sharpened in combat and technical skills bolstered in college and vocational schools; it also doubled attendance rates at universities across the country, making higher learning accessible to more classes. Since its inception, Congress has readjusted the MGIB numerous times, but largely untouched since its last major adjustment, the MGIB is now outdated as the cost of education rose exponentially over the past decade.


Currently on the senate floor is Sen. Jim Webb’s [D-VA] S.22: Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007 a sensible and comprehensive overhaul of the antiquated MGIB. The bill is endorsed by Senators Chuck Hagel [R-NE] and John Warner [R-VA], both veterans.

Today the MGIB provides approximately $1,100 per month depending on the veteran’s school and military status. Sen. Webb’s bill will radically expand educational benefit coverage for both active duty and reservists, and provide tuition (equivalent to the highest in-state public university cost), living expenses, and a monthly stipend. The Webb bill is the first attempt by our government to bridge the gap between real world costs and the stipends shelled out by the VA. It is a step in the right direction towards truly “supporting the troops”.

But not everyone agrees. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain [R-AZ], is adamantly opposed to Sen. Webb’s bill, and recently introduced his own counter-bill, S. 2938: Enhancement of Recruitment, Retention, and Readjustment through Education Act of 2008. Like Webb’s proposal, McCain’s modifies the current MGIB benefits, but that is where the similarities between the bills end. The main enhancement in McCain’s bill comes in an increase of monthly payments to $2,000 per month- but only for troops who serve on active duty for 12 or more years (average age after 12 years of service: 31 years old). This is the crux of the McCain bill: it ties its increased benefits over the current MGIB to a veteran’s length of service in an attempt to boost military retention numbers.

After merely skimming the titles of these two bills, one immediately understands the purpose behind both. Webb’s bill rewards service first and aids recruitment second. McCain’s creates additional qualifications for benefits and encourages retention for education-seeking veterans. And while the MGIB is an integral part of the total enlistment equation, most troops don’t want to stay in the service simply to accrue better educational benefits. Those who stay in (are “retained”) stay for the complete lifestyle- its benefits and sacrifices.

Using length of service as a measuring stick to determine who receives education and who does not is incredibly obtuse and out of touch- it suggests that a standard enlistment is an inadequate amount of time to earn these benefits. Within their first three years at a deployable unit, most troops have been to war at least twice. Shouldn’t serving your enlistment honorably, giving up your youth in the process, be enough to earn you the educational support you were promised?

Amazingly, convincing the Pentagon (vocally opposed to the Webb bill) and McCain and his acolytes of this seems like it will be a surprisingly difficult task. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell recently said: “We have no issue with the fact that Senator Webb wishes to, you know, provide a more generous education benefit to troops, but we are certainly concerned that this would be eligible to them after only two years of service,” said Morrell. “We think…that the longer you stay in, the sweeter the benefits… [should be] to you. Six years would show a commitment to service.”

There are plenty of reasons troops leave the service before six years, and they are often anything but self-serving. Too bad the already college-educated, non-warfighting bureaucrats at the Department of Defense think you’re uncommitted if you serve for less than six years.

Co-author of the McCain Bill (and McCain disciple) Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-SC] goes further: “I appreciate the effort, but I think the Webb plan is a bad approach to delivering education benefits to veterans that is going to be unnecessarily costly, that is complicated and has disparity in results that make no sense. We don’t reinvent the wheel.” In other words, veterans are not worth the cost in dollars or time spent in changing the system.


Ultimately and obviously, this issue boils down to three words that politicians throw around a lot these days: support the troops. We’ve had hundreds of bullshit skirmishes in which hawks ridiculously declared opponents of the war in Iraq as not supporting the troops, but now we’re having a real one about giving veterans the chance to go to college and we have those very hawks deflating this noble bipartisan initiative. As I sit here writing this, I know for a fact that at least four of my Marines dropped out of school after starting college because they could not afford to work full time and attend school. This is despite the $1,100 MGIB allowance they received every month. I asked one of them if $2,000 would have made a difference, and they replied, “Not in eight years, sir.”

When I applied to college, a top-end private education cost about $100,000 including living costs. A recent book by Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes estimates that the Iraq War will exceed $3 trillion in US tax dollars. To put the war hawks’ complaints about the cost of Webb’s bill into perspective, the money spent on the war in Iraq (through the appropriations bills they demand) could have instead been used to send 30 million American veterans to America’s most prestigious schools, nearly all-inclusive. But we’re actually talking about a tiny fraction of that number of troops, and a fraction of that cost of education- the bill only proposes to cover in-state public school tuition and a living stipend, not membership to the Harvard Club. The actual cost of Webb’s bill is estimated at $52 Billion over 10 years. That amount is spent every 25 weeks in Iraq.

The Webb bill enhances troop welfare and truly makes a difference in the way our country values returning veterans. The McCain bill is a token measure designed to stick a band-aid on the MGIB, even though it actually undercuts the better, bipartisan bill from Webb. At best, this is politics at its worst. At worst, McCain and Co. are saying that America cannot afford to send the troops to college, but it can afford to keep them in an ill-conceived war in which they might die, for up to 100 years. Ideologically and mathematically that doesn’t add up.


Further Reading: NY Times Salon Defenselink VetVoice


Update:

Today [23 May 08], the senate overwhelmingly passed the Webb GI Bill with a 75-22 vote. But despite another lopsided vote in favor of the bill in the House (256-166), it is now headed for a vowed veto from President Bush.

Three senators missed the vote, including Sen. McCain, perhaps because he felt fund-raising to be more exigent than veterans' advocacy. During debate on the bill, Sen. Obama called McCain’s support of veteran’s rights into question. McCain responded, “I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.”

Expectedly, the war of words between both presidential candidates continues to escalate, but the bottom line is that regardless of which one of them wore a uniform, militarily, McCain is on the wrong side of this debate: the Webb GI Bill is a bold and broadly supported solution to inadequate benefits for our veterans; McCain’s entire position is backwards and slaps all veterans in the face.

After watching McCain fight the bipartisan GI Bill overhaul and then miss the actual vote, for the first time, I seriously question his ability to serve as a senator, much less president. He certainly can no longer refer to himself as the "armed forces' choice".