I am supportive of a new GI Bill, but I can understand the concerns about this new bill from the Pentagon:

Defense officials are alarmed by the very real prospect that Congress this year will enact the robust GI Bill education plan designed by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. One Defense official, who declined to be named, described the bill as a “retention killer” for the all-volunteer military.

Webb reintroduced his bill, the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act (S 22), last week with changes that attracted strong bipartisan support, including the endorsement of Sen. John Warner, R-Va., former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I’m just going to go full bore on this thing,” Warner told Military Update in a phone interview.  [Stars & Stripes]

Here is where the concerns of Pentagon come in:

“Why would anybody stay for another deployment when they can go out on a four-year free ride, with guaranteed rent and utilities at the E-5 standard, which by long-standing DOD policy is a two-bedroom town house?”

Given current conflicts, this official continued, even volunteers who like service life might decide “to sit out for a year or two, in a large rented town house, and come back when things are more hospitable.”

Such concerns can’t be dismissed, Warner said. But he’s still ready to give Webb’s plan “a try.” Today’s veterans, he said, deserve it.

Read the whole article for details on the bill, but veterans will be getting a sweet deal with this bill especially with the bill paying housing costs while going to school which is an incredible benefit.  This new GI Bill will without a doubt make retention very difficult. 

I think a way to help manage the retention hit would be by offering soldiers a large bonus instead of paying for them to go to school if they so choose.  For example, if it is going to cost the Army $60,000 to send a soldier through college for four years, then instead of sending the soldier to college let the soldier keep the $60,000 in cash if the soldier wants to on top of what other re-enlistment bonus the soldier is eligible for.  I think such an option would mitigate the hit taken by the military by soldiers getting out of the force to go to college. 

This bill needs to happen because soldiers deserve the benefit, it will increase recruiting, plus as I have shown there are ways to manage the possible retention crisis.  The US military has been more then pulling their own weight for the good of the country and denying this benefit because of a possible retention crisis would be just plain wrong and the troops deserve better.