MILITARY -- WEBB'S GI BILL WOULD ENCOURAGE 30,000 NEW RECRUITS ANNUALLY: The Pentagon, the White House and other conservatives have rallied against Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) 21st Century GI Bill, citing a recent CBO report that concluded that Webb's bill would reduce reenlistment rates by 16 percent. In fact, the report says that the drop in reenlistment rate would be offset by a 16 percent increase in recruitment. Slate has taken a closer look at the CBO's numbers and has noted that the military would in fact see several times as many new recruits as drop-outs because "the '16 percents'" in the CBO report "aren't necessarily equal." Slate explains: "the CBO estimate concluded that the 16 percent increase in recruitment would add an additional 30,000 recruits annually, while a 16 percent decline in re-enlistment would result in 7,000 fewer re-enlistments annually. In other words, new recruits would greatly outnumber soldiers who decline to re-enlist."