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GI Bill costs are worth it, vets groups say

Two veterans groups — the nation’s largest and one of the newest — are urging lawmakers to weigh the cost of improved veterans’ benefits against the cost of America’s current wars.

“The GI Bill is a cost of war as much as any other expenditure,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans, founded in 2004. “Any member of Congress who votes for a $170 billion war bill and then votes against the GI Bill is nickel-and-diming our troops. Veterans of all generations will be outraged by that decision.”

Marty Conatser, national commander of the American Legion, said that when the Legion fought in 1944 for the original World War II GI Bill, “even some veterans’ groups complained that it would break the treasury.”

“Instead, the GI Bill transformed the economy and has been widely hailed as the greatest domestic legislation Congress has ever passed,” said Conatser, whose organization has 2.7 million members.

The comments from Rieckhoff and Conatser come as GI Bill legislation, which had been on a fast track for adoption as part of the wartime supplemental appropriations bill, has run into problems with a group of conservative Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, who have objected to the $51 billion cost unless specific funding to pay for it is identified. That demand forced House leaders to cancel a scheduled vote on the bill last Thursday.

This cost “is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sacrifices made by America’s service members and their families,” Conatser said.

To critics who say it is too expensive, Conatser said they should “visit Walter Reed.”

“War is expensive indeed,” he said. “The bulk of that cost is paid for by the men and women who wear the uniform. Benefits are just a small, small cost of war.”