Happy short week, campers! In honor of Memorial Day (you remember that bit about honoring the soldiers, right? In between barbecues?), we start off with a discussion of Sen. Jim Webb’s updated GI Bill, aka the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. It passed the House on May 15 by an enormous margin, and passed the Senate on May 22 with a veto-proof 75-22 vote across partisan lines.

Webb, the only serving U.S. Senator with a child in Iraq, wants to update the GI Bill to reflect current educational costs. Many historians cite the original GI Bill as one of the most important factors in post-WWII American prosperity. Instead of returning to factory and skilled labor jobs, young veterans were able to attend college and qualify for the professional careers that lifted families across the U.S. into the middle class and launched the Baby Boom.

Today’s GI Bill, though, is a disgrace. It does offer some education benefits but not nearly enough to make a dent in soaring tuition costs. The new bill will increase the benefits so that today’s vets can attend the four-year colleges of their choice. Benefits would be would be available to any member, active or reserve, who has served at least three months on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon (and John McCain, who skipped the vote) oppose the bill. They argue that it would be prohibitively expensive and would hurt retention rates, since it would enable vets to leave the service and attend school.

Webb points out that every dollar spent on the original GI bill was repaid seven times over in economic prosperity. As for retention rates, Webb notes that the Dept. of Defense 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.

As the bill heads to the President’s desk, it will be interesting to see how his team handles the political fallout of a veto that will a) almost certainly be overridden, and b) appears to be against the best interests of our troops. Stay tuned.