It's Wednesday, So House GOP Idiots Set To Screw Up More Important Legislation
It's Wednesday, So House GOP Idiots Set To Screw Up More Important Legislation
This time it's the National Defense Authorization Act. They usually like that!
The House of Representatives must clear an $886 billion Pentagon bill by the end of the week, but as we all know and have witnessed in painful, slow-motion car crash footage, productive governance utterly confounds the Republican majority.
Far-right MAGA dolts want to stuff the must-pass legislation with rancid amendments related to abortion, LGBTQ issues, race, gender, and artificial intelligence. They should worry about that last one after they’ve demonstrated some natural intelligence.
Their tedious culture war is guaranteed to alienate the Democrats they’ll need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, and they lack the ability to pass much of anything on their own unless they’re censuring Adam Schiff or bouncing Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell off committees.
The House Rules Committee met Tuesday and spent most of its time figuring out which of the more than 1,500 doofus amendments will reach the floor for debate. However, there’s reportedly a “mysterious memo” circulating that recommends the MAGA wing block the bill outright unless the committee includes the amendments related to abortion and tormenting trans people.
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Rep. Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, warns that the bigoted grandstanding could threaten the bill’s passage. "There could also be serious issues here depending on which amendments are made in order in the final bill," he said.
The legislation already made it through the House Armed Services Committee in a blowout 58-1 vote. But the panel sidestepped some of the most contentious issues, including Republican efforts to overturn a Pentagon policy that reimburses troops who travel to seek abortions. That panel also dodged proposals such as limiting medical care for transgender troops, rolling back climate change policies and gutting Pentagon diversity and inclusion programs — all of which would have alienated Democratic votes.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as always, remains at the mercy of the House Freedom Caucus, who could easily tank the bill unless it includes two specifically awful amendments: There’s one from medical quackpot Rep. Ronny Jackson that blocks the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy — a "red line" for many conservatives — and another equally vile one from Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana that would block military health care coverage of gender transition surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops.
Whoever wrote the memo also demands that the amendments are welded into the bill and not subject to separate floor votes.
Politico obtained a copy of the memo, which reads, “Leadership clearly planned to pass the NDAA on a bipartisan basis, and therefore wanted to keep conservative amendments that cross Democratic ‘redlines’ off the bill.”
Yes, such “red lines” as “providing health care to our troops regardless of their identity.” Commies!
This sounds a lot like Matt Gaetz, who’d previously whined that McCarthy had dared work with Hakeem Jeffries to pass the debt ceiling bill that kept the global economy from cratering.
When selling his soul for the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy agreed to place Reps. Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, and Ralph Norman on the Rules Committee. They are likely to kill the bill in committee unless it contains the MAGA amendments.
House Rules Chair Tom Cole mouthed some words about a “collaborative process.”
“I hope and expect that a large number of amendments reflecting ideas from members on both sides of the aisle will receive full and fair consideration on the floor,” Cole said.
House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers demands further “oversight” of Pentagon leadership and gutting of “left-wing, divisive programs." Roy said Tuesday, “We need to make sure that we’re changing the culture of the Department of Defense back to defense, not social engineering."
The Department of Defense wants to attract a diverse, talented workforce, which I suppose is a problem for Putin-enabling right-wingers.
The Democratic-controlled House passed the NDAA 377 to 48 in 2019, 295–125 in 2020, 316 to 113 in 2021, and 384 to 37 in 2022. They gave pay raises to US troops, modernized equipment, improved strategic competition with China and Russia. They got the job done. House Republicans can only deliver a shit show.
[ Politico ]
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