A product of the GI Bill

In defense of the new GI Bill, I offer myself as Exhibit A of what a good idea it is. And I offer my example, not because I was a direct recipient of past GI Bill benefits, but because of what it offered my GI Dad and how in the long run it contributed to a successful middle class lifestyle that gave him and my Mom opportunities that they in turn were able to offer their eight children.

I was struck by the indirect effect the GI Bill had on me and other Baby Boomers as I watched a recent segment of CBS News' "Sunday Morning" program that was devoted to expected passage of an updated GI Bill.

The original GI Bill, called the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, was, according to the "Sunday Morning" report, a rare instance of the president and Congress being proactive: Franklin Roosevelt, even before the end of World War II, anticipated and got Congress to agree that something had to be done to steer the country's war-driven economy away from the Depression that had occurred after World War I. The GI Bill of Rights promised every GI Joe -- my GI Dad among them -- and GI Jane low-interest loans to buy a house and a free education.

For my Dad, who served with the Army Air Corps, which included supply runs for Gen. George Patton's Army during the Battle of the Bulge, it meant a chance at a college education, which he took at the University of New Hampshire, graduating in 1948. He went on to Columbia for a Master's degree, married my Mom, took an officer's commission in the U.S. Air Force, got a PhD from Denver University and went on to teach at the U.S. Air Force Academy, all the while the two of them building the American dream of family and opportunity.

It begs the question: Would all that have happened without Dad's access to the benefits of the GI Bill?
And so it begs the question now: Why aren't we doing the equivalent for the soldiers who return from the fight today? Granted, it is a different war, this ill-defined War on Terror that is playing out in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the consequences of war -- however it is currently defined -- remain the same. Men and women volunteer to fight our fight, and the country, as it did after World War II, needs to step up and help their transition once they get home.

And while we're all very cost-sensitive these days, the $4 billion a year cost of the new GI Bill should not deter us from its support. As the "Sunday Morning" report pointed out: That $4 billion is the equivalent to funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for a single week.
In 1999, now retired NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw published "The Greatest Generation" as a tribute to the men and women of World War II who went on to build modern America.

If the pass-along benefit from the Greatest Generation worked so well for their Baby Boomer children, it seems fair to give today's GI Joes and Janes -- those GI Dads and Moms -- the same chance to create opportunity for their own children, the next generation.