The Old College Try

I have been meaning to jump into the ongoing hullabaloo about the GI bill, but McCain's recent appearance on The View has finally compelled me to get down to it. (Yes it has come to this, even the GOP will go play suck up with Babawawa and her minions to get the daytime TV viewer to vote for them. I wonder if Elisabeth Hasselbeck offered to stir his coffee for him or anything?)

If you have the time and nothing else to do you can catch the whole thing here. What really interests me is McCain's comments on the GI bill. A little background first:

James Webb, the Virginia senator, a democrat and also a veteran of Vietnam has authored some legislation (along with fellow senator and vet and Republican, Chuck Hagel) that would revamp the GI bill. You may remember that a generation of Americans used the bill to pay for college after WWII, resulting in a strong middle class and a great period of prosperity for the United States. While, times they have changed. Today, the benefits for vets have shrunk and what used to pay for four years at any school, now won't cover three years at a public university. (Side note: members of the National Guard receive even less help.)

So in steps Webb. He estimates that it would cost about $2 billion (according to Newsweek's Anna Quindlen, this is about half what we spend a year on recruitment, and what we are spending in a couple of days in Iraq). The Department of Defense has been balking over the bill—saying that giving the soldiers more educational opportunities would hurt retention. We wouldn't want you to be short on warm bodies to send off to die, now would we!

Here is where McCain enters the picture. He hasn't endorsed or supported the bill, despite the fact that he, of course, received his college education at the Naval Academy, courtesy of the American tax-payer. Think he forgot? However, on The View he makes the statement that "[O]ne of the things we ought to do is provide them [the vets] significant educational benefits in return for serving."

WTF????? Does Walters and Whoopi have some magic power or is McCain simply pandering yet again. Maybe he needs a definition of significant. He has in the last couple of days flip flopped on his plan on how to fix the current mortgage crisis so maybe this is just his week to change his mind.

Back to the vets, Quindlen cites statistics from the Bureau of Labor that unemployment among young vets is THREE TIMES the national average. Apparently there are already some Iraqi vets who are homeless and/or suffering from substance abuse problems. So definitely giving these young people the option of higher education would be a good thing. Maybe if they felt they had a hope for the future and a chance for a good job after they are cast aside by this administration they wouldn't be in such straits.

Quindlen concludes by quoting Harry Colmery, the man who created the original GI bill:

"If we can spend 200 to 300 billion dollars to teach our men and women to kill, why quibble over a billion or so to help them to have the opportunity to earn economic independence and to enjoy the fruits of freedom?"

I don't think there is much else to say.