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(Updated) McCain Wants To Blackmail the Troops

Posted by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist in At TMV.
Apr 18th, 2008 | Comments

UPDATE

As this link shows and as a commenter indicated after this story was posted on Thursday, John McCain now seems to be vaccilating on whether to break with the White House and Pentagon on increasing educational benefits to veterans and is under pressure from some veterans groups to do so. Stay tuned.

* * * * *

John McCain was once a returning soldier – in fact a soldier returning from five-plus years as a POW who was a victim of the very torture techniques that he now embraces. But you would have to go far to top the reason that the befuddled Republican presidential wannabe is giving for not restoring the historic GI Bill to wartime levels:

It would encourage soldiers to shed their uniforms for college and civilian life.

Got that? McCain favors keeping the present crapola GI bill level of an average $9,500 a year no matter what college costs — and it costs a heap more.

Like neary 10 million other veterans, I finished my college education on the GI Bill, but that was when it provided full tuition, housing, and living costs before being scaled back to a “peacetime” program in the mid 1980s that pays a flat sum.

So McCain is just fine if American troops stay in Iraq for 100 years, but adequately rewarding them for their sacrifices is wrong and he’ll withhold support for a bipartisan bill to greatly expand educational benefits.

More here on what can only be termed a form of blackmail.

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Rudi

I like McClown, but his stand on this is pure BS. Not every vet is lucky enough to be the privileged son of admirals...

Tully

It's BLACKMAIL to not massively expand benefits from the amounts and terms in effect when someone enlisted?

Like neary 10 million other veterans, I finished my college education on the GI Bill, but that was when it provided full tuition, housing, and living costs before being scaled back to a “peacetime” program in the mid 1980s that pays a flat sum.

You're a WW2 or Korea vet? Because the GI Bill has been paid flat-sum since the Veterans’ Adjustment Act of 1952. The only thing close to "full ride" since then was the program Webb used, which wasn't the MGIB at all but a Chapter 31 program for those with service-related disabilities. Or did you use VEAP, which didn't start until 1977 and only ran through '85?

Chapter 31 is still in operation. Today's Chapter 30 MGIB payment of $1100/month is the inflation-adjusted equivalent of the 1977 payment level, and still requires the first-year pay-ins that it has for the last 20-some years. So what am I missing here, Shaun?

ChrisWWW

From the ABC article:
Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

O NOES!

Did the troop starved military consider that a more generous GI Bill might entice more people to sign up?

shaun

Tully:

Vietnam.

Slamfu

I'm confused Shaun, how is it blackmail? Blackmail implies that I'll screw you over unless you do something for me. McCain is just planning on screwing the soldiers over on this one regardless. A shitty thing to do, but not blackmail.

Also, didn't someone put out a list about how GOP legislators have routinely boned the troops on stuff like this while the Dems are the ones sticking up for them. Meanwhile the GOP gets the good PR because they "Support our Troops". The GOP idea of supporting out troops seems to be more based on a willingness to get them killed for nothing and less about actually taking care of them and using them wisely.

DLS

It's not blackmail, obviously. Logic and knowlege of correct definitions of words are "challenging" to lefties here who have other objectives than reporting facts in mind.

I will say that Shaun is probably above the perverse mentality of other leftists who would believe instinctively that failure to vastly increase any entitlement or benefit from government upon reflection or moment's notice is some kind of crime.

DLS

Not increasing something enough to satisfy demands = a "cut" -- a DC staple

EEllis

Well the biggest problem is it just isn't what he said. When he was asked if he was for a bill the Clinton and Obama supported he said that he hadn't studied it enough. That bastard!!!!!!!! He later said that he and others were working on a proposal and he wanted it to include incentives to stay in the military. That is just different than Shaun reports, patheticly so.

Rudi

Tully - Wiki covr the GI bill extensively, the "flat sum" increased after Vietnam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
Almost immediately critics within the veterans’ community and on Capitol Hill charged that the bill did not go far enough. At first, single veterans who had served more than 180 days and had received an “other than dishonorable discharge” received only $100 a month from which they had to pay for tuition and all of their expenses. Most found this amount to be insufficient. In particular, veterans who had endured the hardships of the Vietnam War recoiled at the government’s failure to provide them with the same generous educational opportunities as their World War II predecessors. Consequently, during the early years of the program, only about 25% of Vietnam veterans used their education benefits. But for the next decade, a battle raged in the government to increase veterans’ benefits. Congress succeeded, often in the face of fierce objections from the fiscally conservative Nixon and Ford Administrations, to raise benefit levels. In 1967, a single veteran’s benefits were raised to $130 a month; in 1970 they rose to $175; under the Readjustment Assistance Act of 1972 the monthly allowance rose to $220; in 1974 it rose to $270, $292 in 1976, and then $311 a month in 1977.

I remember a cousin who used the "flat sum" after Vietnam.

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