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Senate passes war funding, new GI Bill

A war funding bill including $162 billion for the military’s combat-related expenses and a $63 billion overhaul of GI Bill education benefits passed Congress on Thursday and was headed to the White House to be signed into law.

While there had been many warnings over several months of work on the measure of a possible presidential veto of HR 2642 for a variety of reasons, White House officials have assured Congress that President Bush will sign it.

The signing will bring an end to a Pentagon cash-flow crisis that threatened to disrupt military and civilian payroll, cancel or delay maintenance, and postpone nonessential training and travel.

And, for the first time since the Vietnam War, there will be a completely free veterans’ education benefit program that pays enough to fully cover the cost of getting a four-year college degree.

There was a lot of back-patting as the Senate gave final approval to the measure with a 92-6 vote, but the lawmaker getting and appearing to deserve the greatest praise for the GI Bill initiative was Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a freshman senator and Vietnam veteran who said he was just trying to give combat veterans the benefits they deserve.

“Eighteen months ago, we began with the simple concept that those who have been serving since 9/11 should have the same opportunity for a first-class educational future as those who served during World War II,” Webb said before the vote. “Today, we have accomplished that goal. I would like to emphasize that this is not simply an expansion of veterans’ educational benefits. This is a new program, a deserved program.”

After a lot of debate, lawmakers have decided the new GI Bill program will be called the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, the name Webb used when he first introduced the bill in January 2007, shortly after he took office. While the name is cumbersome and doesn’t appear suited for a spiffy acronym, congressional aides who worked on the bill said some veterans groups objected to calling it the 21st Century GI Bill of Rights, a name used by many supporters, because an education-only benefits plan is nothing like the original World War II GI Bill of Rights, which included education and unemployment benefits, loans to buy a home or start a business, and other readjustment benefits.

There is talk of naming the bill for Webb, but that has not yet happened.