I'm really surprised that there has been very little discussion of what could be John McCain's "achilles' heel" in the 2008 election.

 

It's just amazing to me that a war veteran such as John McCain would vote AGAINST Congressional legislation supported by not only a veto-proof majority of Congress, but every major Veterans' organization in this country. Not only does he for one reason or another vote against the bill, but he then puts forward lame excuses that are easily contradicted by minor research of his sources.

 

His major claim is that this bill would 'cause a 16% increase in the number of veterans leaving the service completely'. However, he forgot to mention that in the SAME study that he was quoting from, it also went on to say that any exodus of veterans would be offset by the increase in recruitment spurred by the new college tuition guarantees in the bill. Whoops.

 

Barack needs to hammer McCain on this issue, because McCain's greatest perceived strength as a politician is his military service. It just confounds me that he would vote against something that would help out the overdeployed and WAY overstressed soldiers who are also committing suicide at a record rate. It really makes me start to question if something is seriously wrong with this man.

I have a much better excuse. It was a bad bill.

I have a much better excuse. It was a bad bill.

Why?

I have a much better excuse. It was a bad bill.

Why?

 

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1e66d902-2e5b-11...?nclick_check=1

 

 

interesting take on the bill.

Military makes its sacred claim

By Christopher Caldwell

 

Published: May 30 2008 18:56 | Last updated: May 30 2008 18:56

 

You can measure the continuing power shift in Washington by looking at the costly package of veterans? benefits sponsored by James Webb, the Virginia senator elected on an anti-Iraq war platform in 2006. President George W. Bush has promised to veto the measure. The scene is set for a showdown and Mr Bush is set to lose it. Over Memorial day, the editorial pages of US dailies backed Mr Webb?s bill as the least the country could do for soldiers who have sacrificed so much. A majority of Republican senators joined Mr Webb?s Democrats to render the bill veto-proof.

 

John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has proposed a more modest alternative, but the defection of his party spells its doom. Now that Mr Webb?s measure has been dubbed a ?21st-century GI bill?, it is above criticism.

 

The original GI bill of 1944 is a landmark piece of US welfare legislation. It was passed in the panicked anticipation that releasing 15.2m veterans (30 per cent of the country?s grown men) into the labour market at once would sow economic chaos and political radicalism. Outlandish benefits were paid to place demobilised soldiers in universities ? full tuition at any undergraduate or graduate institution, plus a comfortable living stipend for the soldier and his family. Because 7.8m men ? the ruling class of the next generation ? benefited from the GI bill, its drawbacks have been ignored or denied. It had no impact on the bottom of the US income pyramid. It drove female students out of universities. It was the channel through which the hierarchical, macho culture of the military spread into boardrooms and town halls. Its cultural legacy includes the three-martini lunch, Playboy and a lot of soulless public architecture.

 

This pragmatic intervention in the labour market was confused with a moral principle ? a military ?right? to a free college education and (therefore) a place in the ruling elite. General Wesley Clark recently co-wrote an article insisting that ?education assistance is not a handout, it is a sacred promise that we have made for generations in return for service?.

 

The old GI bill still exists, much amended, and it still offers a ton of money ? up to $40,000 (?20,000, ?26,000) towards education costs. That represents a third of tuition fees for a private university, two thirds at a public university and far more than it costs to go to a community college. The military offers a range of other benefits to draw recruits. Enlistment bonuses can reach $20,000 and for specialists the Army College Fund will pay up to $70,000 worth of tuition. Loan repayment programmes are also available, not to mention state military scholarship programmes and billions in federal funding, which soldiers can apply for.

 

Events in Iraq and Afghanistan have made these benefits hard to realise in practice. Television recruitment ads show Marines learning about computers, or lined up in their dress blues in front of the Golden Gate bridge, but many have spent the war hunkered down on some mine-strewn highway in the Hindu Kush. Volunteers who expected to study at war?s end are discovering that violent insurgencies can go on and on. Reservists, some of whom have spent half a decade in combat, are not eligible for the best educational benefits at all. The Webb proposals are tailored to address the worst of these problems. They treat reservists (and National Guardsmen) like the regular military and the benefits can be tapped long after the soldier?s tour of duty.

 

While the military can be used as a means of delivering welfare benefits, it is not only that. It is also a fighting force. Mr Webb?s plan would raise the value of potential education benefits high enough ($90,000 at the first re-enlistment point) to provide enough incentives to leave the military altogether ? a big problem in a force built on technical knowhow. (These incentives would spur recruiting, too, a Congressional Budget Office report found, but not so much as they would spur retirements.) Mr McCain?s alternative gives more consideration to keeping the fighting force at full strength, partly by making the soldier?s educational benefit transferable to other family members.

 

As with any call for restitution, there should come a moment when whatever debt we have towards those we have wronged or undervalued has been discharged. Apparently that point is never reached when the ?sacred? claims of the military are concerned. The 21st-century GI bill is based on a 20th-century idea of welfare attainments ? that they are to be measured in absolute terms, without reference to economic limitations or social balance. If a 40-hour working week is good, a 35-hour week is better and a zero-hour week is ideal.

 

If you look at things this way, the case for making college free for soldiers is not much stronger than the case for making it free for everyone. The CBO estimates that the Webb benefits will cost $52bn over a decade. A few years ago, Adolph Reed Jr, the political scientist, drew up a plan to eliminate tuition fees for every public university student in the country for $27bn a year. Democrats in the House have suggested funding the Webb bill with a ?-per cent tax on higher income earners called the ?patriots? premium?. That could yet be expanded.

 

There are good reasons to defend this new GI bill. But the near-unanimous support for it is due to something more than a need to adjust the incentives in a volunteer military. It signals that much of the country yearns for a lurch back in the direction of welfare-state paternalism. One gets the uneasy feeling that the fiscal profligacy of the Bush administration will be followed not by fiscal prudence but by another round of deficit spending, to compensate those who feel they missed out when the pie was being carved up the first time around.

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