Give veterans the chance to pursue higher education

President Bush's opposition to a re-energized GI Bill is staggeringly cynical. He says it would be too expensive and would encourage men and women to drop out of the armed forces to pursue an education.

Expensive? OK, let's grant that every new spending bill must be vetted for potential harm to the federal debt. Yet a 1988 congressional study showed the GI Bill -- proposed by FDR in 1945 to allow returning World War II veterans to get a free college education -- returned $7 for every dollar invested in terms of productivity, consumer spending and money coming back as tax revenue.

A beefier GI Bill would nudge people out of the service prematurely?

The facts don't bear it out. Consider that the armed services have been forced to lower standards for recruiting, offering hefty cash bonuses and agreeing to overlook serious criminal records to get more people to sign up.

Offering recruits a paid college education, on the other hand, might increase the number of people looking to enlist -- by tendering them the same opportunities their parents and grandparents enjoyed.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, would restore GI Bill benefits to accessible levels for those have served since Sept. 11, 2001, basing coverage on the tuition of a state's most expensive public university. Full-time students would get a $500 living stipend.

The estimated cost of the Webb bill is $2 billion to $3.5 billion. It's hard to imagine this investment not enriching its beneficiaries and the nation -- especially compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars going into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Men and women returning from war today are a breed apart. Many are coming off second or third tours. Many are National Guard members who didn't expect to have details overseas. Many have families to support, their college careers or jobs having been interrupted by a call to duty.

We owe all veterans a debt of gratitude, but gratitude and medals don't pay the bills. We owe them preferential shots at jobs and job training, and the highest form of this assistance is an affordable college education.

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton support the Webb bill. Republican candidate John McCain opposes it on the same grounds as the president, saying it will draw people out of the ranks. Bush has pledged to veto the Webb bill.

GI Bill benefits have slipped to the point that many veterans can't afford to use them. It's time to recommit to a GI Bill that offers the same leg-up that helped those returning from service in the decades after World War II.