When a new deal was reached to approve Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's GI bill this week, all the principled objections to the measure suddenly melted away.
The about-face was breathtaking on Thursday night, as the House approved Webb's bill with other domestic spending items on an overwhelming vote of 416 to 12.
To the casual observer, the lopsided margin might suggest the GI bill-- giving war veterans a free college education-- was never controversial.
In fact, the bill had languished for over a year and faced vehement opposition.
Conservative House Democrats, known as the Blue Dogs, insisted that any major new entitlement program-- including veterans' benefits-- must be paid for, either by raising taxes or making offsetting spending cuts in other programs. Webb had provided no funding mechanism, saying the benefits were a ``cost of war" that should be financed through deficit spending, like the war itself.
Even as late as Thursday night, with passage virtually assured, Blue Dogs made the case for fiscal responsibility.
``We ought to be willing to find a way to pay for these things that are so important," said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., a leading Blue Dog. ``What we chose to do is borrow the money and send the bill to our children and grandchildren."
Minutes later, Boyd and the rest of the Blue Dogs--- who number about 50 in the House, none from Virginia-- voted in favor of Webb's deficit-funded GI bill.
Despite their objection, they knew the measure was heading for approval after House leadership had reached a new bipartisan deal with the White House.
The political calculation was relatively simple. Voting to balloon the deficit for a good cause typically carries no political price. But voting against a popular-- and many say well-deserved-- benefit for war veterans could be deadly.
The bill is expected to cost $62 billion over the next 11 years.
Last month, the Blue Dogs' opposition to the measure forced House leaders to propose paying for it with a surtax on income above $500,000 for single filers and $1 million for joint filers. The measure passed the House-- with no Republican support-- but went nowhere in the Senate and triggered a White House veto threat.
Now, with a bipartisan deal at hand and the need for swift action-- the measure was tied to funding for the Iraq war-- lawmakers knew that passage was unstoppable. Opposition melted.
But even more striking was the policy reversal issued Thursday by the White House.
For months, the Bush administration and the Pentagon had objected to Webb's bill, saying it was too costly and would entice too many troops to leave the military early at a time of war.
But the White House suddenly agreed to support the bill after lawmakers agreed to a Pentagon request that makes the measure even more costly-- letting veterans transfer their unused education benefits to spouses or children. That provision added about $10 billion to the 11-year price tag of the bill.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., came close to accusing the White House of sheer hypocrisy. Warner, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted that he had authored a provision years ago to let veterans transfer their benefits.
``It has been around for a long time and received no support from the Bush administration in 2002 when it went on the law books," Warner said on the Senate floor after learning of the White House reversal.
The inclusion of the transferability provision hardly explains why the bill is no longer a threat to the military's retention of troops, as the Pentagon had worried about for over a year. More likely, the White House agreed to support the GI bill as a price for getting funding for the Iraq war.
The measure must still go back to the Senate for final approval, most likely next week. But every indication is that Webb will now emerge a winner.
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