GI Bill Timeline

From USA Today:

"GI Bill redefined how America viewed vets"

 

For much of its history, the United States treated its military veterans pretty poorly. Soldiers in the Continental Army were near open revolt in 1783 because their pay was late and their pensions weren’t being funded as they were supposed to be. Only a visit from George Washington prevented a mutiny. The “Bonus Army,” a collection of jobless and destitute World War I veterans, descended on Washington in 1932 during the Great Depression, seeking early payment of bonuses they had been promised for their service. Congress voted down the request, and Army troops commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur attacked and burned their camp. The country’s attitude toward veterans reflected the widely held belief that military service was an obligation, says Stephen Ortiz, a historian at Binghamton University. The nation would provide payments to war widows and assistance for veterans who lost limbs, but there was little thought to helping veterans reintegrate into the civilian world. “Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism,” President Calvin Coolidge said in 1924 when he vetoed the original legislation to supply bonuses to World War I veterans. (Congress overrode his veto. The legislation promised that bonuses would be paid no earlier than 1945. The Bonus Army of 1932 was seeking immediate payment.) That attitude changed with passage of the GI Bill during World War II. The legislation provided millions of veterans with free education, job training and loans for homes, farms and businesses. Looking back on the legislation from today’s perspective, it’s easy to underestimate just how revolutionary the bill was. “Arguably it’s the most successful social legislation in American history,” says Ortiz, who has written extensively about veterans issues. As World War II was still being fought, lawmakers began worrying about how to reintegrate millions of Americans back into the workforce when the war ended. For the first time, the country was considering going beyond meager veterans pensions and payments to widows. The legislation’s official name — the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act — reflected its far-reaching ambition. Boosting the postwar economy was one aim of the legislation, but it wasn’t the only one. The country’s leaders were worried about the social and political impact of millions of veterans returning to the United States after having gone through intense combat in Europe and the Pacific. “There were palpable concerns about veterans and their return and what it meant for American society,” Ortiz says. It was controversial when first introduced. Fiscal conservatives considered it a government handout. Elite universities worried that the influx of millions of veterans would lower standards. But the bill had strong support from newly powerful veterans groups, particularly the American Legion, which helped draft the legislation and lobbied on its behalf. It was signed into law on June 22, 1944, a couple weeks after American GIs stormed the beaches of Normandy. Americans were also more accustomed to an expanding role of the federal government after the New Deal and years of all-out war. The impact of the legislation went beyond what its supporters imagined. It not only helped veterans rejoin civilian society, but also profoundly changed that society. It boosted the economy, fueled a housing boom and supercharged the American workforce. In 1940, about 160,000 people in the USA received college degrees, according to an article by Milton Greenberg in the State Department publication Historians on America. The graduating class of 1950 was about 500,000. Higher education was no longer limited to wealthy Americans, as it had been before the war. About 2.2 million World War II vets attended college, Greenberg says. Many others received vocational training, allowing them to participate more fully in the postwar economic boom. It turned the country into a nation of homeowners and entrepreneurs. Today, less than 1% of the U.S. population serves in the nation’s armed forces. Military pay and benefits have improved. In 2008, Congress passed a new GI Bill to provide educational benefits for those who joined after 9/11. Its impact is much narrower than the original, but some of the spirit remains the same. Former U.S. senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat who served as a Marine in Vietnam, introduced the legislation because he said there was still a need to assist servicemen who were returning to civilian life after years of war Even in a volunteer force, there are still plenty of servicemembers who leave the military after their first enlistment. “There’s a huge misperception in this society that the volunteer system is a career system,” Webb told USA TODAY after getting the legislation through Congress. “It is still a citizen-soldier system.”

 

^ It's interesting to learn how Americans have changed their attitudes towards soldiers and veterans and how that has evolved to the GI Bills.  It shouldn't have mattered if serving in the military was mandatory or not - if you risk your life for your country then the least your country's government can do is give you help to adjust back to civilian life. ^

 

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/08/04/gi-bill-redefined-how-america-viewed-vets/31016691/