D.O.D.: Webb Bill Threatens Volunteer Military
Military.com:
Defense officials are alarmed by the very real prospect that Congress this year will enact the robust GI Bill education plan designed by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). One Defense official, who declined to be named, described the bill as a “retention killer” for the all-volunteer military.
Webb reintroduced his bill, the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act (S. 22), last week with changes that attracted strong bipartisan support, including the endorsement of Sen. John Warner (Va.), former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I’m just going to go full bore on this thing,” Warner told Military Update in a phone interview.
That’s a worrisome vow for Defense officials who believe enhanced post-service education benefits, particularly if enacted while troops face multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, could trigger an exodus severe enough to put the viability of the volunteer military at risk.
No one disputes Webb’s claim that his enhanced GI Bill would boost recruiting sharply. But a Defense official said it also would encourage thousands of young service members, trained at great expense, to separate after completing their initial service obligation to attend college fulltime.
Webb, in an interview, described such arguments as “absurd.”
The Department of Defense, he said, “is doing a very good job managing its career force, given the strains that are on it. But it’s doing a very poor job of taking care of the people who don’t come in for a career.”
Raising GI bill benefits nearer to those offered to veterans returning from World War II, Webb said, will give every volunteer, particularly those with no intention of making the military a career, “a proper reward for their service” and a great tool for transitioning to civilian life.
Defense officials have to understand, Webb said, that a volunteer military is “only a career system to a certain point.” The current system isn’t properly rewarding those who enter “because of love of country, or family tradition, or the fact that they just want to serve for a while,” he said.
The services, he said, “have got this one demographic group they keep pounding on and throwing money at. Yet there’s a whole different demographic group that would be attracted to coming in and serving a term.”
Webb declined to describe either demographic group in more detail.
His enhanced GI Bill would be available to any member, active or reserve, who has served at least three months on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001. The level of benefits would be tied to length of service. The $1200 member buy-in under the current Montgomery GI Bill would be returned.
The bigger change would be in the value of benefits. Maximum benefits, earned for 36 months’ active duty, would cover tuition for up to four years at a level to match tuition at the most expensive in-state public school. The average across states is about $1900 a month. MGIB pays $1100.
Webb’s bill also would pay a monthly stipend to cover living expenses. The stipend would reflect local housing costs near school and would be set to equal military Basic Allowance for Housing for married enlisted in grade E-5.
A feature added to win Warner’s support would encourage private colleges to make their schools affordable to veterans. Schools that agree to pay half of their tuition in excess of the most costly state schools would see the government cover the remaining half. Thus academically qualified veterans could attend some of the best schools in the country. Warner said it’s the kind of opportunity he got after World War II using the GI Bill.
The Defense official said that was a different era when the government was worried about long-unemployment lines from millions of returning draftees. A robust GI Bill now would make it difficult to keep careerists.
“Why would anybody stay for another deployment when they can go out on a four-year free ride, with guaranteed rent and utilities at the E-5 standard, which by long-standing DoD policy is a two-bedroom townhouse?”
Given current conflicts, this official continued, even volunteers who like service life might decide “to sit out for a year or two, in a large rented townhouse, and come back when things are more hospitable.”
Such concerns can’t be dismissed, Warner said. But he’s still ready to give Webb’s plan “a try.” Today’s veterans, he said, deserve it.
Senior defense officials declined to be interviewed. But Bill Carr, deputy under secretary of defense for military personnel policy, said in a written statement that DoD’s top personnel initiative for Congress is to allow members with unused MGIB benefits to transfer them to spouses or children.
President Bush endorsed the idea in his State of the Union address. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he heard spouses ask about MGIB transferability at a town hall meeting with Army families. Transferability, Carr’s said, “is clearly what those in uniform have clamored for.”
Webb and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who introduced companion GI Bill legislation in the House (HR 2702), don’t like the concept of encouraging service members to trade away earned education benefits. Too many veterans, Webb said, could come to regret the decision years later when they want to go to school or even after a divorce.
Scott said it also would be unfair to put members in a situation where they would be perceived — or would perceive themselves — as selfish if they withheld their earned education benefits from a spouse or a child.
Warner said he views transferability favorably, as a good retention tool. But he agreed with Webb, he said, not to include it in GI Bill legislation.
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Okay, as with most democrats this guy pisses me off, and mostly for his shity face-to-face treatment of the President after he (Webb) was elected. (Look it up if you don’t recall). And the whole thing with the election race with Allen … macca (????) …
He also creeps me out … something in his face/eyes … in addition to the revelation about his fiction writing with the “pedophile” scene. Then there was the whole “bringing the gun to the Capitol in a brown paper bag, but having my pee-on carry it for me” thing.
But now … he kind of scaring the shit out of me …
March 7th, 2008 at 8:48 amPay the soldiers what they are worth (like Blackwater pay grade) and it won’t be an issue.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:50 amI don’t have a problem with that. I would just hope they don’t have an expiration date on it. I was in from 67 to 72 and had maximum benefits available. I never thought myself to be university material and never gave it a thought until Sep 81. You had to use all your benefits before ten years after your discharge date. Comes May 82 and so far I had used 7 months of benefits and all the rest of the total 48 months were lost to me because of the way the GI Bill was written in those days.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:51 amDrillanwr, not to change the subject, but you remember we were talking about that stylized speech. Listen to Chelsey Clinton, she is a perfect example of that ginding, croaking affectation so many choose to use.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:55 amIsn’t it waaay strange to actually hear that girl TALKING?
I mean, the Clintons kept her so cloistered for so long … and now we hear her talking …
March 7th, 2008 at 9:52 amJohn, same story with me…got married while I was in, got out and lived in the middle of Nowhere, Tx and couldn’t go to school. By the time I got somewhere I *could* go to school, I lost my GI Bill. Dagger! I don’t quite understand why there is a time limit on benefits, since they have $1,200 of your money.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:34 amI think soldiers should be payed at the same level of the President with benefits.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:50 amskh.pcola, e-mailed my senator, Senator Spectre. Told him my experience and suggested he might want to look into that part of the new bill. I’m pretty sure they didn’t take money out to add to the GI Bill when I was in. I think they started doing that when the military went volunteer. It all turned out for the best, though. I was no shinning example of success, but, at this time they have more than made up for it, at least for me. I can’t complain. Pay me then or pay me now. Now I just have to complain about commercials that are too loud. Why do they do that?
March 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pmOn the face of it I think if this kind of boost to education benefits will only help with recruitment, and will entice more people that wouldn’t think of joining. However, I just don’t buy Webb’s approach as being giving the troops what they deserve.
Couple that with a bill that would make all income made as an active duty member of the USMC, USN, USA, USAF, & USCG along with all reserve components while on Active Duty tax free forever, and as long as they are honorably discharged upon completion of service tax free to the grave, I believe you would have an incredible amount of people volunteering to join.
Something along these lines is what is needed to rebuild the US Military after Clinton purged 500,000 plus personnel from its ranks throughout his tenure. The troops now are doing an exemplary job with the man power we have now, but if they had not made those cuts in the 90s complicit unfortunately with a Republican congress after 1994, the left would be out of one of their mantras that the “Army is overstretched”.
If you want generational change that would learn the lesson of it is honorable to serve to counter this poison of the 60s burnouts, just offer these enticements. Starting with higher base pays, educational, and tax-free benefits, and watch it raise the numbers of the volunteer forces. That is the difference between the 60s and now, those who served in Vietnam overwhelmingly served honorably just like now, however, the large portion of the ranks were draftees.
Flip the equation with the aforementioned incentives, a volunteer military paid, and treated well and I believe you would have the numbers to field the size Armed Forces that we need to protect our interests as a nation abroad. A secondary effect will be a generational shift in the thinking that Freedom Really Isn’t Free, and there is nothing wrong with serving your country.
Honor is a good thing no matter what the former Draft Dodgers would tell those who might enlist or take a commission as they hurl insults at the offices of those whom have provided that right to them and they have never sacrificed for.
If what Webb has proposed along with other incentives comes to pass and there is a stampede for the military as a choice watch the libtards belly ache and scream about the immorality of it all.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm