Carper's Corner
Sacrificing for our Veterans
May 30, 2008Upon signing the GI Bill into law, President Franklin Roosevelt emphasized that our troops “have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems.” With the passage of this bill, FDR had the foresight to ensure that the “Greatest Generation” could smoothly transition back into our country’s workforce after the war had ended.
Several of the current members of the Senate who served in World War II probably wouldn’t be there today if it weren’t for that original GI Bill.
The Senate is currently home to several veterans who returned from the World War II and enrolled in college, including Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska, UCLA and Harvard Law School), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii, University of Hawaii, George Washington University Law School), Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii, University of Hawaii), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J., Columbia University) and John Warner (R-Va., Washington and Lee University, University of Virginia Law School). Along with other returning WWII veterans, they received benefits that paid for their college tuition and provided supplementary allowances to cover room and board expenses.
Over time, the benefits available under the GI Bill have ebbed and flowed. By the time the Vietnam War rolled around, benefits for those of us returning from Southeast Asia were a good bit less robust than the benefits enjoyed by earlier generations, although we appreciated those benefits nonetheless.
For the past 24 years, members of our armed service – along with the Guard and Reserve – have been eligible under the Montgomery GI Bill for more generous benefits than those generally afforded Vietnam veterans, although not as generous as those afforded World War II veterans.
The Montgomery GI Bill, which I voted for as a congressman in the 1980s, is a peacetime GI Bill; however we are not at peace today, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In light of that fact, two of my Senate colleagues and fellow Vietnam veterans, Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), have worked hard for more than a year to develop a new GI Bill. If enacted, it would provide the men and women of our armed forces who have served since 9-11 with the education benefits that they deserve.
Senators Webb and Hagel have created a bill that represents the best hope in two decades of increasing veterans’ education benefits. Basically, their proposal provides any member of the armed forces who has served 36 months of active duty or more after 9-11 with the following: the full cost of tuition equal to that of the most expensive public university in the veteran’s state; a monthly housing stipend; and several supplemental allowances to pay for books, tutoring costs and test fees.
Both of my colleagues are to be commended for their hard work and their commitment to our troops. Let me be clear: I support their proposal, and I was pleased to vote in mid-May for an emergency supplemental appropriations bill that included their proposal.
However, how we ultimately pass this legislation will be very important. In addition to funding our troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, this emergency supplemental provides a new entitlement program with these veterans’ education benefits that will cost roughly $50 billion over the next 10 years. Like the rest of this bill’s spending provisions, there is no offset and no way to pay for these new benefits.
Our colleagues in the House of Representatives, however, did something quite different, and – in my view – far more prudent. Rather than just creating a new entitlement program expanding veterans education benefits and passing the cost along to our children, the House found a way to pay for it.
How? They created a new marginal tax rate of 0.47 percent on an individual’s income in excess of $500,000, and for a couple’s income in excess of $1 million.
By offsetting increased costs in veterans’ benefits, the House sent a clear message to our country and to our troops that:
- We will honor today’s members of the armed forces by giving them the benefits they have rightfully earned, but we are going to do so in a fiscally responsible way.
- We are not going to do this by sending our country deeper into debt.
- We will exercise a little discipline; we will tighten our belts.
- We are going meet our troops’ sacrifice with a little sacrifice of our own.
In this time of war and economic hardship, I believe the Senate needs to send a similar message to our troops – “WE will sacrifice here at home to give YOU what you deserve, because YOU sacrificed abroad to protect US.”
That is why I introduced an amendment to the Senate’s emergency supplemental appropriation bill that provides the same offset that the House bill relies on to make the new GI Bill deficit neutral over the next decade. In a year when our federal budget is expected to be some $400 billion in the red and at a time when our national debt has grown by $2.9 trillion over the past five years, to do otherwise is just not responsible in my view.
One of the principles that my parents instilled in my sister and me when we were growing up was, “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth paying for.” Many of my colleagues would argue that providing veterans with a new GI is worth doing. So then, I ask my colleagues, why is not worth paying for these GI benefits as well?
When Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess on June 2, the House and Senate conferees will go to work to resolve our differences in the emergency spending bill, and specifically address whether we should adopt a new GI Bill that sends our country deeper into debt or whether we should pay for it.
I will be there encouraging my Senate colleagues to adopt the House spending offset so we can provide our veterans with the education benefits that they deserve, without adding to the $2.9 trillion of debt that we have steadily placed on the shoulders of our children since 2002 when the federal deficit started rising again.