Obama; GI Bill is welfare
The President did an interview with Bill O’Reilly, in case you missed it, in which he used the example of the GI Bill to defend government benefits as building the middle class not part of the nanny state. Here’s the video and the discussion they had on Fox this morning;
This is from the text of the interview;
So, the, uh, so my point is is that that’s not a nanny state. That’s an investment in the future generation. G.I. Bill — is that a nanny state? My grandfather came back for World War II, you’re about to write a book on World War II. Smartest thing we ever did was make an investment in the American people. When those guys came back from war, that’s what created our middle class. We-we suddenly trained up and created skills for folks. We gave ‘em subsidies so they could go out and buy homes. Through the FHA, those things weren’t giveaways. We-we understood that what that would do would create a base middle class of folks who were able to, uh, work hard and get ahead.
He’s right in that it wasn’t a give away. It was earned, earned in a way that most Americans aren’t willing to earn their college education. Most would rather have their parents pay for it at great sacrifice from their parents, as opposed to the sacrifice that a service member must make to finish their education.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have a college degree if I hadn’t joined the Army. I went to college at nights and earned my Associate degree entirely while I was assigned to infantry units (not an easy way to do it). I wrangled an ROTC assignment out of the Hoffman Building and knocked out another year that the university paid for and then finally did three semesters on the GI Bill, while I went to school full time, had a full time job and a part time job – because no one was giving me food stamps.
But no one handed it to me like a welfare benefit. I worked for it. No one gave me a loan or a grant. And I know most of you did the same thing. I had some professors who said the same thing as the President. I set them straight. Someone should set the President straight, too.
Thanks to Twist and John for the link.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Veterans Issues
A guy I work with showed me this and I just had to share it with you guys. I thought he was kidding and had to look it up.
The Left does not recognize any difference between earned and unearned benefits. To them, everything belongs to the state; and everything is granted by the state. Nothing can be earned, as it is through the bounty of the state that man exists and society advances.
Yeah, that’s pure bullsh!t. But many of them actually believe that bullsh!t.
I notice that there is no time limit on using welfare benefits but the GI Bill has an expiration date.
That statement was almost physically painful to read.
Hondo – that is perhaps the most important distinction to be made between the thinking of sane individuals and the way libbies spew their verbal diarrhea. No thought. No logic. Just “I want, therefore it is.” Nothing is earned.
Many have heard this story before, Hondo, but the concept you articulate crystallized for me on March 17, 2007 at the Lincoln Memorial. Across the street, the libby freeks were tearing up the lawn, littering, and generally making a mess of themselves and everything around them as they chanted, “What do we want?” followed by an inarticulate response, then “When do we want it?” followed by: “NOW!”
On my side of the street, a bunch of cold veterans and their loved ones were waving US flags chanting, “USA, USA, USA!” Never had the difference between the ranting children and the adults been so obvious. Lunatics on one side of the street with the grown-ups on the other.
The GI Bill is more part of a benefits package than an entitlement. You get it as part of your contract, you use it and it’s gone. Entitlement my ass. NR nails it when he points out that there’s no time limit on welfare benefits; It goes without saying that the requirements to obtain that GI Bill are substantially higher too. Even some soldiers don’t qualify. Non-mobilized reservists and guardsmen are not eligible either, despite their service (and some of them do work their asses off and don’t get activated)
TL;DR Screw the people that see it as an entitlement. It was part of my contract. I give you X years of my life, you pay for Y dollars of school.
Obama is such an ass. The G.I. Bill created far more than a middle class. It created the nation of men who led this country for the next generations. From middle class to board rooms and the even to the Presidency. He makes it sound like G.I.s are all middle class low brows. The snug, condescending ass hole! I am thankful I had the G.I. Bill and used it. But I believe I EARNED it. Not a hand out.
I know you miss me, Jonn…so let me…let. it. rip.
THIS GUY, THIS POS BUDDY FUCKER EXTRAORDINAIRE needs his own personal blanket party. He knows he is creating more leaners than lifters and MY boys and gals should not have to pay the price for his shitcago class ineptitude.
More of his, “You didn’t build that” crap.
And no, I didn’t use my College Fund, etc., to EARN my degree.
Then again, I didn’t claim to be a foreign student, right Barry?
Welfare? Hardly. Most normal folks would call it “payment for services rendered.” We were promised certain benefits if we served for a certain period of time. And while the Obama Administration is not the first to try and take away benefits, they are certainly trying harder than previous ones.
Maybe I’m just old school, but we used to have to pay money into the system in order to receive GI Bill money. Doesn’t sound like a welfare system to me, sounds like an investment from the individual.
Yeah, anytime I deal with contracts any “benefit” associated with the contract is considered remuneration for services rendered or simply put another form of payment.
The GI bill is post facto payment for services rendered under contract. Under no definition can that be considered welfare or even can it be considered an entitlement it should be considered compensation under fulfillment of contractual obligation.
But calling it that would make it a crime to alter or deny the payment, thus calling it welfare or entitlement allows the government to lie to you when you sign on the line in good faith.
This once again makes it hard for me to advise that anyone believe anything that anyone representing the government tells them. Even though I enlisted I am hard pressed to honestly offer that as good advice to a young person today when the evidence clearly indicates the government will lie and not honor any promise or commitment it makes to any individual under the guise of a “contract”.
At this point in time it appears the only one obligated under a military enlistment contract is the enlistee as the government clearly does not have to honor its’ promises under contract nor apparently does it have any inclination to do so. When the military decides it needs young men of strength and character who have tattoos below the elbow or knee it takes those young men and promises to educate them or provide them with care should they require it, I think we have all seen how that promise is kept by the military as of late. Those responsible for honoring their end of the bargain from the government side should be ashamed at how they dishonor their word and their character with the lies they perpetrate.
@11 VOV You seem to be a very well educated man. Thank you for your post. Well said. Far better than my simple minded rant.
VOV–what Barruh and the rest of the dipshits fail to realize is this: yes, it’s a benefit earned for service. Yes, it can be modified, altered, and even taken away, just like benefits in a civilian employer can be as well.
But could I quit or go somewhere else because they fucked with my bennies? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Again, Bodaprez trots out his, “You didn’t build that” crap, thinking that the GOVERNMENT, not the PEOPLE, created not just a burgeoning middle class, but leadership for the next half century. Government has proven time and again you can throw billions–nay, TRILLIONS–at a problem (War on Poverty, anyone?) and still not get anywhere near resolving the issue.
I will say that when I was in I did not contribute to an education fund. It didn’t come along until well after I mustered out. I still believe I EARNED the G.I. Bill benefits I used. I do think the new program was far better because the input of the member compared the the benefit received was great. At least in my mind and with the little I know of it.
I literally yelled at the TV last night when I heard this bullshit come from his fucking mouth. Oreilly is so fucking clueless when it comes to anything veteran related too that he allowed such bullshit to go unchallenged.
Obama is a piece of shit. His views and actions regarding the US military is beyond deplorable and insulting.
Sparks, I’m just another idiot with an opinion….but I tend to voice my opinion in these long winded rants, thank you for the kind words though….
Sparky, under a civilian contract if I agree to fund your pension plan or your education fund upon completion of the terms of the contract I can be sued if I fail to deliver after you have fulfilled your component of the contract. Also any non-compete clause or anything else I asked for can be nullified if I breach the terms of completion. In my mind the alteration of an expected contract completion payment to an education fund is a breach of contract. Only the government can breach a contract and avoid court….that’s my big problem with all of it. These people mouthing this horseshit expect to be taken at their word when their word is nothing but bullshit lies and misrepresentation.
I am not a soldier. Not yet, anyways. But in any case, I cannot believe anyone would make the comparison between Welfare and the GI Bill. The former is given out to those who cannot stand on their two feet, either because of their lack of personal initiative or circumstances beyond their control. The latter, however, is earned through service, through giving up years of the recipiant’s lives protecting and serving the United State’s people and Constitution. To equate the two is to either drag that service into the dust, or to raise the Welfare recipiant to the highest service an American citizen can perform.
Furthermore, I’m starting to wonder about Obama’s grandfather, the same grandfather who “liberated Auschwitz”. I’m dead serious, can we get an FOIA on this guy, see what he really did, if anything at all? The President plays him up like he was some kind of hero, but given the man’s family and how they’ve acted, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that he was administration, or maybe even didn’t serve at all.
It’s that whole concept of exchanging some sort of labor in order to receive something that is lost on lib-tards. Simply breathing and converting oxygen to CO2 is the sole accomplishent of these jerks.
@16 VOV you may think you are just another idiot with an opinion but I envy your ability to express your thoughts.
As an engineer I think and write in a linear, technical process. Just what happened after 30 plus years in my field. Intended for an audience with similar thought processes. Thus my thought process very often does not translate well into prose. I do envy Ex-PH2 and those who can truly “write”.
@17 Thank you and well said. He does not intend in his words, to elevate anyone. He considers himself to be three or four cuts above the average Joe. So like most turds who think that way, he lowers everyone. I truly believe that Obama believes in his heart and mind that military people are the lowest echelon of society. To be used, abused and discarded. I believe as strongly that he holds welfare recipients and illegal alien, criminals up to be the “future” of America. Because they are his and his party’s voting block and security. One of the many reasons I absolutely despise Obama.
@18 Just An Old Dog. Thank you. Yes there is an exchange of value between a service member and the government. In any other program like, welfare and all handouts, there is NO exchange of value. It is give them money for nothing, hand over fist. They contribute nothing and are given everything. All that is asked of them…vote Democrat.
@18: “Simply breathing and converting oxygen to CO2 is the sole accomplishent of these jerks.”
No it’s not. Many of them shit out kids left, right, and sideways, like they are working a production quota.
Welfare? How is it welfare? I took out a loan to pay for my tuition to finish school. I used my GI Bill to pay back that loan, and in order to keep my head above water, I ran a small boarding stable which managed to give me enough cash after expenses to pay for gas and groceries.
I carried an 18 to 22 hours per semester load, made the Dean’s list every semester with 3.5 to 3.75 on a 4.0 scale, and worked my ass off from 5:30AM to 9PM.
So where the hell does that asswipe in the White House get off saying it was fucking welfare?
Someone tell me, please, how a lazy, self-absorbed, slacker and dilettante, who has had every damned thing handed to him his entire life, justify making a statement like that.
Oh, that, and his ‘you didn’t build that’ line of utter bullshit are the kind of thing that have me pounding the keyboard so that I can get in his smug, asshole face and say ‘Yes, I did build that, you conceited ass bastard son of a bitch. I built it with my own two hands, asshole. Shove it where the sun don’t shine.’
Do people not have to pay into GIBill any longer? I know I did. So for me not only is GIBill part of the contract I signed but I paid for it both with years of my life and actual money. Paid into it two fold if truth be told, once in the form of taxes and, twice when the money was taken out of my check for the first two years or so I was in.
What welfare recipient pays into welfare? If they are unemployed they aren’t paying taxes, and to my knowledge no one ever had to contribute money in advance for the privilege of collecting benefits at a later time.
You comment and give your life experience as if Owebama knows what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know crap about the GI Bill, what it’s used for or what America’s veterans go though. He doesn’t care.
He wants his welfare state and will destroy everything until he gets it.
This is epic, ladies and gentleman. America has never seen anything like Owebama and his crop of “politicians.”
Oh, Sponge, we’re just pissed off, that’s all, and venting about it.
I paid into the Army College Fund to get money out plus my service….mind you, it was a great deal but I actually PAID MONEY IN, OUT OF MY POCKET. It amounted to more than 10% of my income my first year in the Army….
Farflung Wanderer: no, Obama’s grandfather didn’t liberate Auschwitz. But Obama also never actually claimed that, either.
What Obama did claim – erroneously – was that he had “an uncle” who participated in liberating Auschwitz. However, that claim too was bogus. His spokesmen later “corrected the record”. That is, they tried to cover up his mistake.
US troops did not liberate Auschwitz. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.
Obama’s great uncle did in fact participate in the liberation of a different concentration camp, Ohrdruf Nord. But as bad as Ohrdruf Nord might have been, it was decidedly NOT in the same league as Auschwitz.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/where_in_the_world_is_auschwit.html
I travel the middle of the political road. I am as unhappy with Obama as I was with Bush. I read through the text of that part of the speech numerous times. I tried to see where he says that the GI Bill is Welfare. It doesn’t say that. All I read was Obama saying that the GI Bill was good for America.
What I do read here is a bunch of hate mongering and vitriolic comments from people who are as bad as the liberals you accuse of the same things. I believe in giving people a hand up NOT a hand out. Dems want to give it all away without personal responsibility. GOP wants to take it all away and let them fend for themselves. Both approaches fail.
What makes a difference is a caring and compassionate approach. Not charity. Setting limits etc. Helping others to help themselves breeds success. Hating those who need a helping hand seems counter to the christian beliefs that republicans profess to preach. My eyes are open to the corruption that is politics. I just choose to try and make a difference in my community.
Homdo, I know my history. The Russians found Auschwitz, as well as all of the big, well-known camps as the vast majority of the camps were east of Berlin.
As for his uncle’s service, I’ll take your word for it. But this is a digression.
Sorry, “Hondo”, not “Homdo”. Hit the wrong button over here.
Farflung Wanderer: de nada regarding the typo. No offense intended in my previous comment – many people are ignorant of precisely who did what on the ground in World War II. I didn’t realize you were among the minority who were knowledgeable.
I kid you not, I grew up on books on the Second World War. My dad was a big history guy, and we only live a few miles from Cantigny, IL, which is home to the official museum of the 1st Infantry Division (which we go to as a family every year on June 6th), as well as an half-hour’s drive to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the U-505.
I’m not a bona-fide expert, but I know leaps and bounds more than the average person (I would say I’m bragging, but…).
*a half hour’s drive.
really? did the food stamp, unemployment, HUD housing, Obama-phone, welfare people stand armed at post in a foreign land? or at home? were they posted away from their families for a year or more (other than the time the welfare people may have spent in prison)??? I must have missed something… but the “all government is the same” is how a socialist thinks…
My standard response, too often used these days, is to ask the leeches of society exactly what they have done for me and mine. Nothing? Then that is exactly what I owe them.
I will admit that I racked up some student loan debts while I was in school, on top of the GI Bill. I had everything all planned out, too. Graduate with a Religion degree, go into a Master’s program and become a Chaplain. The Chaplain recruiter told me that I could opt out of my commissioning bonus in lieu of student loan repayment.
Then the Federal Government declared that my religion program was a “non-producing program” and cut my federal funding in the middle of a semester. I was able to scrape my way through that semester, but couldn’t afford the next.
So, now I am sitting here needing only 16 credits to graduate, but I can’t find a frakking job that will do more than help provide rent and bills (apparently nine years in supply overqualifies me for any job that is even slightly related to my trained career field), and slowly aging my way out of becoming a Chaplain.
However, Illegal Immigrants now get in-state tuition, but qualify for full-ride grants through the federal government. At least the government is taking care of its veterans, right?
So, this is what I come home to after a day at school, using the GI Bill. I had a kid tell me last semester “how lucky you are to get to go to school on the GI Bill.” He says, “Yeah, you’re lucky to get that money. I had to take out a student loan.” I said “I lived through 28 years of service in some real shit holes to earn the right to go to school on the GI Bill. Sucks to be you for not doing the same. Now, GFY!” Dang, now my blood pressure is up. Btter go pour an adult beverage 🙂
The whole semester I collected GI Bill before the old bill expired cost me 9 years.
Farflung – Dachau was liberated by the American 42d and 45th Divisions. My Dad was there, and I’ve watched the footage at the Holocaust Museum in DC about it.
Good, I had to pass drug tests to get the GI Bill.
Start drug testing all welfare recipients
David, not long after the Holocaust Museum opened, I was able to visit. They had copies for sale at that time of the first US Army staff reports of the liberation of Dachau. They are a most amazing read.
There is quite a lot of information about Dachau available now online: http://www.ushmm.org/search/results/?q=dachau
In case you need any more information.
We now return to regular programming.
@39, kafir, AMEN TO THAT, it was done here in Florida, and as soon as it was signed into law by Gov, Rick Scott, the ACLU sued to halt it, and they’ve done so everywhere else that kind of bill was passed. Liberals want everyone held to the same common denominator. Look at Joe or Jane the Vet, who has busted his or her ass for years, gone into harm’s way more than once, many who have seen friends lose life and limb as well as those who have lost limbs themselves mean nothing to the snot-guzzling libs in Government. As they see it, Sammy the welfare slug, someone like William Derek Church the Round Ranger should be handed THE SAME thing the real Vet has risked life and limb for, because according to those snotweasels, “it’s only fair”, just like when B. Hussein 0bama & Company CANNOT hand out welfare, free phones, healthcare, etc. to welfare dropouts, illegal aliens, etc, BUT TO HELL WITH US VETS receiving any quiality healthcare via the VA, because we don’t vote democrat en masse!
On a sidenote, are you from South Africa? I remember your screen name being the title of a book written by someone from there!
@39 kafir…thank you. I’ve been saying that along with millions of other conservative American, legal citizen, taxpayers for a long time. No one listens. If they gave drug tests for welfare one of two things will happen. One, the welfare class will become the straightest, most drug free segment of society (highly, highly doubtful). Or two, (most likely event) the savings on welfare payouts to drug users will retire a big piece of the debt, refund social security, fund ALL military benefits and payments and maybe, just maybe force the Derek Church deadbeats off their asses and back to work. Well maybe not back to work. Some people will eat the dirt in their backyard before they ever go back to work. So screw ’em.
I paid for my GI bill benefits, $1200 and 24 years of service. I guess I’m a total welfare sponge, drawing retirement, VA disability, and using my GI bill benefits to enhance my new job. Did I mention I’m a GOV contractor? Biggest leech ever!
I guess Obama has never had to do any work for any of the money he’s gotten from the government, so he’s just not mentally equipped to understand the difference.
Flag…
You may not need an answer…But what state did enter in from? Home of record might be able to help you finish…some states give better “benefits” to vets…just sayin’.
I served 1969 through 1971 , never asked for anything … I probably should have.