Just How Low Have We Sunk?

After the Second World War, we introduced the GI Bill (the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944"). While it grew over the years, in its origin it was a response to the return of our military forces to civilian life after a devastating conflict. For the returning vets, it offered up a college education, a year of unemployment compensation and loans to buy homes and start businesses. It altered the course of millions of lives, and spurred an unprecedented era of economic expansion for this country.

Now, after 9 years of unending war overseas, and thousands of lives lost, and irreparable change in our social fabric from the "war on terror", we have another generation of military coming home. This time to an economy more depressed and less inviting than any since the mid 1930s.

Now, as then, we have the opportunity to use this challenge to our advantage, and create a new "GI Bill" or at the least massively invigorate the existing measures, to both create a means of welcoming home those troops on whom we have placed such a wretched burden over the last decade, as well as to recharge an ailing economy with an influx of highly trained and capable workers.

Unfortunately, it seems the best we can do is the “Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011”:

It would offer a tax credit to companies that hire out of work veterans and increase an existing credit that already goes to companies that hire veterans with service-related disabilities.

A tax credit for hiring companies? I'm sorry, but that's pathetic.