Sen. Jim Webb's "Post-9/11 GI Bill" passed the Senate today by a veto-proof majority. The bill, inserted into a war spending bill, would provide higher education funding to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the same way that the GI Bill provided higher education for World War II veterans.

President Bush -- who alleges that he supports the troops, and yet who clearly does not support the troops (despite having given up golf to show his solidarity with them!), is against the legislation. Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain is also against the legislation. McCain's reasoning? If you give enlisted men and women the choice of staying in the military or going to college for free, guess what: they'd rather go to college. This is offensive to the requirements of President Bush's ongoing War on Terr', which needs meat to throw at the nondescript enemy. Craig Newmark (of Craigslist fame) links to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that enlistment would not decrease if veterans were given better access to higher education.

President Bush, for his part, is against the legislation because he thinks it would cost too much. The Veterans Administration claims the new bill would cost $5.4 billion per year. How much is that? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the War on Terror -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and other operations -- cost over $500 billion as of 2007. Spread over six years, that's roughly $83 billion per year. The president thinks that "too much" is 6.5% of the cost of the War on Terror annually. Here's another number: $50 billion. That's how much money may have been wasted in just the Iraq War.

What would President Bush do if he were faced with passing this legislation or vetoing it? The Republican P.R. machine is very talented, but it would hard for them to argue that educating war veterans is bad for our country. Bush may just take the weasel ground and attempt a pocket veto like he did over the holidays. He doesn't want to sign the bill because he doesn't want his terrorist-meat to leave him. On the other hand, he doesn't want to veto the bill because that would make it seem as though he didn't care about the troops (which he doesn't, unless "empty words" count as supporting the troops).