Trailhead: A campaign blog.

More GI Bill Debate

Yesterday we pointed out a major flaw in the debate over the new GI Bill. In fact, the CBO analysis cited by both McCain (in opposing the bill) and Obama (in supporting it) shows that the bounce in recruitment would outweigh the decline in re-enlistment. But as many have pointed out, that view doesn’t take "experience" into account. Who’s to say whether 30,000 new recruits will be better for the military than 7,000 noncommissioned officers who’ve been around the block?

A friend in the Marines who is currently stationed in Iraq (and prefers to remain anonymous) argues that it’s even more complicated than that:

I have to agree with your update in that experience is worth its weight in gold. Everyone dreads the ‘boot drop’ when PFCs and lance corporals straight from MOS school show up knowing ... very little. It's the same with 2^nd Lieutenants who show up to a unit—there's a reason they're called boot lieutenants. What's really valuable is retaining someone who's spent years of his life training and actually deploying and working in this war because they have knowledge and experience in both their jobs and in just dealing with military life that you can't create overnight. 

Of course, the downside to good retention is that in the military, you can't stay in a job for 20 years no matter how good you are at it. You have to be promoted and move up the ladder until you're promoted to your lowest level of incompetence. So while we say we want a force full of experienced captains and NCOs who have been around the block a few times, we're lying to ourselves if we think retention is the solution. With the current promotion rates (something like 98 percent make it to captain in the USMC, and I think it's the same if not higher in the army) and the accelerated pipeline (I've heard the time from commissioning to captain is 39 months in the Army, with 18 to 1^st Lieutenant) it's only a matter of time before that captain, if he's motivated and a performer, will become a major and then a lieutenant colonel, or that shit hot sergeant becomes a staff NCO. So under that system you need a constant input to ensure that at the ranks you want people you can continue to have experienced officers and NCOs while still promoting people out of those ranks. The force structure is very very dynamic and maintaining an equilibrium, or even approaching a desired end state, is very difficult and very temporary. [Emphasis added.]

So while "experience" is important, it means nothing if you don’t have a steady flow of new recruits.

John McCain has the advantage of understanding the chaotic structure of the military—he logged more than 20 years in the Navy and has two sons in uniform. But the GI bill debate inevitably gets squished into the narrow terms of who is "supporting the troops" more. It’s easier to argue that more education benefits are automatically better than to analyze the complexities of the military hierarchy. Which is why, at least on this issue, McCain has failed to persuade his fellow senators.

How Much Would the GI Bill Boost Recruitment?

One of the strongest arguments in favor of Jim Webb’s new GI Bill, which passed in the Senate last week, is that while higher education benefits might decrease re-enlistment, they would increase recruitment. This was the case made by the New York Times editorial page over the weekend:

[Opponents of the bill] have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying—as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are—to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.

Their reasoning is flawed since the C.B.O. has also predicted that the bill would offset the re-enlistment decline by increasing new recruits—by 16 percent.

This is true. The CBO analysis (PDF) does predict that the proposed educational benefits "would result in a 16 percent increase in recruits" while estimating a "16 percent decline in the reenlistment rate, from about 42 percent to about 36 percent" (emphasis mine).

The problem is, the "16 percents" aren’t necessarily equal. You need to know the underlying numbers of recruits and re-enlistments to know whether, as the Times claims, the two figures "offset" each other.

The CBO estimate concluded that the 16 percent increase in recruitment would add an additional 30,000 recruits annually, while a 16 percent decline in re-enlistment would result in 7,000 fewer re-enlistments annually. In other words, new recruits would greatly outnumber soldiers who decline to re-enlist. These numbers make the New York Times case—and Barack Obama’s—even stronger than they thought.

A couple of caveats. For one thing, the CBO estimate examines an early version of the bill called S.22, which isn’t the same thing as the bill the Senate passed last week. The Senate adopted the GI Bill as an amendment to Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 2642. The CBO is still working on an estimate for that. Also, the CBO emphasized that its estimate doesn't assume there will be a change in the size and composition of the force. Rather, it assumes that the Department of Defense would maintain the current force structure by decreasing enlistment bonuses and increasing re-enlistment bonuses.

Still, both Obama and McCain have invoked the CBO estimate in their arguments for and against the GI Bill. They might want to update their numbers.

Plus: See our original analysis of McCain's objections to the GI Bill.

Update 1:10 p.m.: A smart reader points out that you have to take into account the vast difference between new recruits and non-commissioned officers: "A senior NCO, or even an NCO with 2-3 years of experience, is light years ahead in terms of competence than a newly minted private." There's obviously no way to know which is "better" -- 7,000 re-enlisted officers or 30,000 new recruits -- but the disparity in experience is worth taking into account.

Troop-Supporting 101

John McCain has some electoral vulnerabilities, but troop-supporting usually is not one of them. It’s a little baffling, then, that he hasn’t signed on to Sen. Jim Webb’s G.I. bill to increase educational benefits for servicemen and veterans. Republicans John Warner and Chuck Hagel are on board. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have signed on, too. And today Obama attacked McCain in West Virginia for failing to support it. Why would McCain open himself up to charges that he doesn’t care about putting troops through school?

McCain says the problem is "incentives." He complains that Webb’s bill gives the same benefits to servicemen whether they serve three years or 20 years, with no added benefits for those who serve longer. Instead, he has proposed legislation that would raise benefits over a longer period of time.

That would be a valid excuse, if McCain’s bill provided as much as Webb’s bill did from the start. After all, there’s nothing wrong with giving more to people who serve longer. Incentives to stick around are only a problem if they come at the expense of soldiers who don’t make military service their career.

But, looking at the numbers, McCain’s bill appears to pay a lot less from the get-go. It gives active-duty members education benefits of $1,500 a month, which shakes out to $13,500 for a nine-month school year. That’s better than the current G.I. bill, which provides only $6,000 a year. But Webb’s version goes further, providing the maximum tuition at your state’s public university system—roughly $14,000 in many states—plus $1,000 a month to cover living costs. All of that totals more than $20,000.

But wait! McCain’s bill raises benefits down the road, right? Yes, but that’s only if you stick around for 12 years of service. And even then, benefits only get raised up to $2,000 a month, or $18,000 over nine months. That’s less than Webb’s bill gives to troops who have served three years.

There are other points of contention. For one thing, Webb’s bill isn’t cheap—estimates put its price tag anywhere from $2.5 billion to $4 billion a year. But that’s not McCain’s complaint. (You can’t really complain about supporting troops too much.) He’s concerned it will make soldiers leave the military before they otherwise would. He might have a point if his bill provided as much as Webb’s for starting servicemen. But that’s not the case.

It’s easy to see how this stance could become a general-election liability. McCain’s background makes him nearly untouchable on military issues, but refusing to give troops benefits could become a gap in the armor. You can see the attack ads now: John McCain says he’s willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years. So why doesn’t he want our soldiers to go to school?? That may be unfair, but the core point stands: If McCain is going to tether himself to the war, he should be willing to pay for it.