Conseravtives And The G.I. Bill

Russian subversive Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (AKA, Ayn Rand) came to America when she was 21 and struggled to make a living as a screenwriter-- and didn't have a single success. She didn't write her profoundly anti-American drivel, The Fountainhead, until after she became a volunteer on behalf of reactionary Wendell Wilkie, running against FDR, and a seriously addicted meth head. She was severely addicted to amphetamines for 3 decades and under their anti-social, psychotic influence, also wrote her second load of garbage, Atlas Shrugged (1957). A third-rate intellect in Wisconsin with the ambition to became a gym bunny, read Atlas Shrugged and has fancied himself a serious economics expert ever since. He was, above all else, always happy to serve the interests of the wealthy donors who put him into Congress. Paul Ryan and Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum came immediately to mind when I tried-- unsuccessfully-- to goad John Boehner into a twitter war yesterday:

Boehner wanted to celebrate the anniversary yesterday of the signing by President Roosevelt (Ayn Rand's bête noire) of the G.I. bill in 1944, the very premise of which horrifies reactionaries like Rand and, of course, Paul Ryan. Conservatives nearly tanked the bill in Congress for two reasons. First and foremost-- and tell me this doesn't sound familiar to you-- the idea of paying unemployed veterans $20 a week freaked them out since they insisted it would diminish their incentive to look for work. That's what Ryan is babbling about in the video above when he's lionizing Rand's explanation of the "moral foundation of capitalism." Other hideous conservatives opposed the G.I. Bill because at the time, college was a privilege reserved for the sons of the rich. They couldn't quite wrap their narrow minds around the concept of sending battle-hardened vets to colleges and universities with elites like their own kids. Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago expressed what many conservative elitists felt about the bill: "Colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles… [The GI Bill] is a threat to American education [and] education is not a device for coping with mass unemployment."

Ultimately, though, it was conservative opposition to the $20/week "unemployment insurance"-- the disincentive, as Republicans still call it today-- that nearly defeated the bill. Congressman John Gibson (D-GA) dragged himself out of a sick bed and rushed back to Washington to cast the tie-breaking vote-- and the same week the Americans were spreading out across and beyond the beaches of Normandy. They just hated that the bill provided for unemployment compensation of $20/week for up to 52 weeks for veterans who had served 90 days or more. One conservative lobbyist wrote at the time that "The lazy and 'chisely' types of veterans would get the most benefits, whereas the resourceful, industrious and conscientious veterans would get the least benefits, if any." Right-wing Dixiecrat, vicious KKK proponent, virulent racist, anti-Semite and pro-fascist John Rankin of Mississippi-- who was infamous for referring to African-Americans as "niggers" on the House floor and for having publicly vowed to never sit next to African American congressman Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY)-- was the Richard Burr of his day. He headed the Veterans Affairs Committee and opposed any benefits that might help African Americans, claiming they wouldn't rejoin the work force, if they were being paid "generous" unemployment benefits, which would "spoil" them. "If every white serviceman in Mississippi," he said, "could read this so-called GI Bill, I don’t believe there would be one in 20 who would approve of it...  We have 50,000 Negroes in the service from our state and in, in my opinion, if the bill should pass in its present form, a vast majority of them would remain unemployed for at least another year, and a great many white men would do the same."

Conservatives, of course-- and as they always are-- were wrong. Less than 20% of the money appropriated for unemployment insurance was distributed and most returning servicemen quickly found jobs or pursued higher education. By 1956 approximately 8 million veterans received educational benefits. Under the act, approximately 2,300,000 attended colleges and universities, 3,500,000 received school training, and 3,400,000 received on-the-job training. The law helped to produce 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists. The percentage of Americans with bachelor degrees, or advanced degrees, rose from 4.6% in 1945 to 25% a half-century later. Also by 1956, the education-and-training portion of the G.I. Bill had disbursed $14.5 billion to veterans-- and the Veterans Administration estimated the increase in Federal income taxes alone would pay for the cost of the bill several times over. By 1955, 4.3 million home loans had been granted, with a total face value of $33 billion. 11 million of 13 million houses built in the 1950s were financed with GI Bill loans. The results rippled through the rest of the economy; there would be no new depression-- just unparalleled prosperity for a generation.

Back then conservatives were preaching austerity, but their lousy ideas were thoroughly rejected by normal people. WIth their iron grip on the mass media, nonsense like Paul Ryan's budget-- which encompasses all the premises of the case against the G.I. Bill and other progressive legislation-- is taken seriously. And Boehner is kidding himself if he thinks he would even bring the G.I. Bill, or anything vaguely like it, up for a vote on the House floor today.