Webb: Bush to Be First President to Veto Veterans Benefits Bill
Senator Jim Webb (D-Va) has proposed a "21st Century G.I. Bill of Rights" to help finance college education for military veterans. It is opposed by the Bush administration and by Sen. John McCain of Arizona,the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it is passed.
Sunday on Meet the Press, Jim Webb made his case for the bill, and blasted Bush for the threatened veto. After all, as Webb indicated, Bush is just fine with extended tours, repeated tours, and stop-less to keep the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I, I introduced this G.I. bill my first day in office. The idea was to give to people who'd been serving since 9/11 the same educational benefits, the same right to a first-class future as those who served in World War II. We, we started working hard on this bipartisan, nonpartisan, hopefully; we have now got 58 sponsors in the Senate, 300 sponsors in the House of Representatives, and a, and a good number of the, you know, the thinking Republicans have moved to us.And now the president says he's going to veto this bill. No president in history has, has vetoed a, a benefits bill for those who've served. So on the one hand, we have this rhetoric, which goes to what I was writing saying, "This is the next greatest generation, these guys are so great." And then we see this president, he's fine with sending these people over and over again where they're spending more time in Iraq than they are at home. He's fine with the notion of stop loss, where we can, we can make people stay in even after enlistments are done. And then we say, "Give them the same benefit that the people in World War II have," and they say it's too expensive. So I think the Republican Party is, you know, is, is on the block here to, to clearly demonstrate that they value military service or suffer the consequences of losing the support of people who've, who've served.








