What GIs deserve
MORE THAN six years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it looked like the US House had found the elusive "sacrifice" that many Americans have wanted to make for their country. It was a request for the wealthiest taxpayers to help fund a new GI bill, offering full public college scholarships to US service members who joined up after Sept. 11 and have served at least three years.
Both House and Senate versions of the bill passed last month - the Senate's by a margin of 75-22. But the Senate stripped out one feature that annoyed the Bush administration and many other Republicans: a tiny surtax on top income-earners needed to fund the program.
Because the House adopted pay-as-you-go rules that require a revenue source for any new spending, its version included a .47 percent surcharge on incomes above $500,000 ($1 million per couple). Or, as Representative John Tanner of Tennessee said: "It comes from people in this country who have the most to give, to the people who gave the most." The Senate move has complicated ongoing negotiations, since many of the House's so-called Blue Dog Democrats - known for fiscal responsibility - won't support the program without a funding source.
President Bush opposes the plan with or without the surtax, on the shortsighted grounds that the scholarships will create retention problems in the military at a time when every soldier is needed for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Senator John McCain also opposes the bill, but has scrambled to propose his own, weaker version.
Another frustration is that, in typical Washington fashion, the scholarship benefits have been bundled in a larger war funding bill that includes other unrelated domestic programs. Congressional leaders don't want to separate them because the popular programs are needed to carry the full bill. For this modest effort to reward brave service members to fall prey to such political calculation is just why so many Americans disdain Washington.
The House bill is a window on how concentrated wealth has become at the top of the scale: a small minority of rich Americans making a fractional contribution can provide enough cash to finance the entire $52 billion (over 10 years) program. Does Bush really think they will miss a .47 percent surtax on income after their first $500,000?
Such stinginess didn't afflict Franklin Roosevelt, who in signing the original GI bill in 1944 said, "It gives emphatic notice to the men and women in our armed forces that the American people do not intend to let them down."
It's hardly too much to ask.
