More GI Bill info. House Nixes Tax increase on Millionaires.

Well I know we have plenty of Millionaire kids out there serving in the military. (HAH!).
They won’t support the military and they won’t pay for more taxes to support the military or the new GI Bill. Folks please call your rep’s about this. Look at the email I sent out earlier this week about the New GI Bill trying to be stopped by some Democrats out there.
Here is the story by the AP and Military.com.

Senate Dems Nix Taxes for New GI Bill

May 15, 2008

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Senate leaders are rejecting a plan by Democrats in the House of Representatives to add a surcharge on upper-income taxpayers to a bill providing $163 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year.The half-percentage point surcharge on income exceeding $500,000 for individuals and income above $1 million for couples was added to the House war funding bill on Tuesday. The tax increase would be used to finance a $52 billion increase in college aid for post-Sept. 11, 2001, veterans that has been added to the war funding measure.

The tax increase on wealthier people was inserted to mollify moderate House Democrats upset with Democratic leaders’ original plan to simply add the big increase in benefits under the GI Bill to the near-record budget deficit. That would violate so-called pay-as-you-go budget rules that require new benefit programs to be “paid for” with accompanying revenue increases or spending cuts.

But Democratic Sen. Patty Murray – a member of the party’s leadership team – rejected the idea Wednesday, telling reporters that the additional veterans money is a cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new college aid bill would essentially guarantee a full-ride scholarship to any in-state public university, along with a monthly housing stipend, for individuals who serve the military for at least three years. It’s aimed at replicating the GI Bill benefits awarded veterans of World War II.

The House is slated to vote on the war funding bill Thursday. The measure also includes foreign aid funding, money for military construction projects, flood protection around New Orleans and a variety of smaller items, bringing the total appropriated spending to $183.7 billion.

In addition to the benefits, Democrats have tacked on a plan to give 13 more weeks of unemployment checks to people whose benefits have run out and 13 weeks beyond that in states with especially high unemployment rates. That provision would not comply with the budget rules requiring deficit neutrality, so its $15.6 billion cost through 2009 would simply be added to the budget deficit.

President Goerge W. Bush has promised to veto any supplemental spending bill exceeding his requests of $108 billion for the remainder of the 2008 budget year ending Sept. 30 and a $70 billion downpayment to fund the war effort for several months into 2009, which would give the next president some breathing space to set war policy.

Bush has also threatened to veto any bill that ties his hands on Iraq. The House measure would require Bush to begin pulling out troops from Iraq within 30 days with a nonbinding goal of a complete withdrawal of combat troops by December, 2009. The provision is expected to be blocked by Senate Republicans.

Appropriations Committee Democrats made some small cuts to Bush’s Pentagon request and added Bush’s $5.8 billion request for New Orleans area flood control projects.

Taken together, the changes to Bush’s requests probably are not big enough to provoke a veto, but the same cannot be said of Democrats’ plans to extend unemployment benefits or improve the GI Bill.

The measure also contains a provision to prohibit using U.S. aid to rebuild towns or equip security forces in Iraq unless Baghdad matches every dollar spent, lawmakers said Tuesday.