My Turn: G.I. Bill has big shoes to fill
Last Tuesday, Congressional leaders introduced a bold new package of benefits for current and future veterans. The proposal is aptly called the “G.I. Bill for the 21st Century.” If enacted into law, it will be warmly welcomed by a new generation of veterans who clearly deserve it.
The bill was introduced on the 60th anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led the crusade for the first G.I. Bill of Rights, and signed it into law, even as World War II was raging.
Whether the new G.I. Bill will make it through the maze of the legislative mill to the president for approval, and thus become an actual law remains to be seen.
For now, one thing is clear. Any new G.I. Bill will have big shoes to fill in coming anywhere near the impact of the one that FDR championed. It has been rightly called “the law that changed America.”
Older Americans remember fondly the virtues of the first G.I. Bill. About 16 million Americans served in World War II. They grew up during the Great Depression, marched off to a world-wide war, and seemed destined to return to an uncertain future. Thanks to the G.I Bill, that future became more certain and vastly rewarding.
The first G.I. Bill offered a panoply of generous benefits to the millions of WWII veterans who qualified. They included education, housing, and unemployment benefits. Roughly 10 million returning veterans took advantage of one or more of these programs.
In education, the veterans who marched into American colleges and universities not only silenced the naysayers of places like Harvard and Yale, by dominating dean’s lists, they also literally transformed the notion of who college should be for.
Before WWII, the mark of an educated person was a high school diploma. The sons and daughters of lower- and middle-class America were expected to go to work, not to college. The G.I. Bill changed all that forever. WWII veterans of many creeds, colors, and national origins proved, to themselves, and to the nation, they were just as smart and just as energetic as anyone else.
From actors Marlon Brando, Charles Bronson, Tony Curtis, and Rod Steiger, to singer Harry Belafonte, former senator Bob Dole, writer Art Buchwald, and economist Andrew Brimmer, they share a common bond of service to the nation, plus the tangible and intangible benefits that their service qualified them for.
By the way, they have all sung the praises of the law that enabled them to reach out, touch their dreams, and realize their God-given potential in their respective fields. In doing so, they helped themselves and helped their country immeasurably.
The first G.I. Bill also had a dramatic, lasting impact on housing for Americans. Before WWII, about two-thirds of American families were renters. Home ownership was a distant dream for them. Thanks largely to the G.I. Bill, millions of American veterans became home owners, changing their dreams into reality, and contributing to the greater reality that about two-thirds of American families were now buying their homes instead of renting them.
Education and housing are just two of the manifold benefits the first G.I Bill offered the generation that fought and helped win WWII. The total cost of the bill was about $14.5 billion. The benefits reaped by our veterans, their families, the economy, and the country: priceless.
In my view, the WWII-era G.I. Bill was one of the most successful laws enacted in the 20th Century. Members of Congress, in both houses and both parties, would do themselves and the rest of us well by reflecting on its legacy, even as they contemplate how to craft a new “G.I. Bill for the 21st Century.” So, too, would President Bush.
Thomas B. Vaughn is a professor at Motlow College and co-host of the WCPI radio show “Viewpoints.”