How Youth Orgs Can Support the Troops

So here's something I just noticed. Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel are proposing legislation for a new "GI Bill" to help veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars go on to college after their service. From a recent op-ed they penned in the New York Times:

Veterans today have only the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which requires a service member to pay $100 a month for the first year of his or her enlistment in order to receive a flat payment for college that averages $800 a month. This was a reasonable enlistment incentive for peacetime service, but it is an insufficient reward for wartime service today. It is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend many community colleges.

It would cover only about 13 percent of the cost of attending Columbia, 42 percent at the University of Hawaii, 14 percent at Washington and Lee, 26 percent at U.C.L.A. and 11 percent at Harvard Law School.

College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.

We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times. First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation.

Over at the Center for American Progress, Eric Alterman provides a whole host of reasons to support such an effort, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are running an action campaign in support of new legislation.

So here's the thing - why are no progressive youth organizations partnering with IAVA or organizing their own campaigns? Young Democrats, USSA, Student PIRGs, Campus Progress . . . all of these organizations organized around the passage of the Cost of College Reduction Act, so why aren't they supporting legislation that would grant similar reprieve to their peers who have served our country?

I don't mean to be accusatory here. If you go to the websites of these organizations, they are all running a wide variety of action campaigns that are all very worthy - from ENDA to Global Warming - and work on the College Cost Reducation Act is not yet done. I recognize that there is only so much manpower that organizations can donate to their work, and at some level they need to prioritize. Yet it seems to me that this is a worthy cause on a number of levels. On a moral level, it's atrocious that so many veterans are now unemployed, unable to pay for school, and even homeless. We should do everything in our power to alleviate that situation. On a political level, this is a fantastic issue to make inroads with young people in the military who may now be disillusioned with the Republican Party.

Also, why on earth wasn't this included in the Cost of College Reduction Act in the first place?