Senate Democrats Act Like An Opposition Party, Block $1 Trillion Defense Bill
Bet they won't let us down any more now!
Democrats in the Senate yesterday protested Donald Trump’s ongoing war against Iran by blocking the annual Defense Department funding bill from moving forward. The vote came days after Trump notified Congress that his phony cease-fire with Iran had somehow not held together and that the US was once again bombing Iran for peace.
Most years, the defense bill, formally called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), is fairly easy to pass because both parties want to fund The Troops and whatever grossly over-budget weapons systems the Pentagon wants. Nobody wants to risk being called “soft on defense,” especially in an election year.
But this year’s NDAA faced some atypical obstacles. For starters, it would throw far more money at the military than usual, with a price tag of $1.14 trillion, the first time a Pentagon funding bill has crossed the trillion-dollar threshold. It’s a bit short of the $1.5 trillion Trump asked for, but a fuckton more than last year’s $900 billion. (That said, Republicans did come along and add another $150 billion in war cash in last summer’s Big Ugly Bill.) A number of Democrats also opposed funding the Pentagon without placing limits on Trump’s deployments of National Guard and active-duty troops to cities.
But the real sticking point was Trump’s pointless war on Iran, which shut down shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz, raised oil and fertilizer prices worldwide, killed thousands in Iran and Lebanon while doing fuck-all to make the world safer, and has no real end in sight.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) sounded like the leader of an actual opposition party, saying in a Senate speech,
“The NDAA cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran. […]
“Donald Trump does not get to drag the American people deeper into a war he cannot explain and does not know how to end — and then demand that Congress look the other way.”
Hell yes, more of that, please. The NDAA failed to get the 60 votes it needed to advance to debate, on a largely party-line vote of 50 to 46.
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Putting the kibosh on the NDAA was also one of the most concrete actions Democrats could take to oppose Trump’s Iran warboner. While Congress has held more than 10 votes on war powers resolutions aimed at forcing Trump to stop his war, none has succeeded because Republicans continue to back Trump and his forever war.
Wonkette fave Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), who piloted a helicopter in our previous Forever War in Iraq and now serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that hell no she won’t support the largest-ever defense bill if it’s simply going to be a slush fund “for Donald Trump to continue his illegal and disastrous war that Americans do not want.”
Duckworth added that “Simply throwing more money at an out-of-control military operation is not strategy; it’s a recipe for a forever war,” and said she couldn’t support any NDAA that doesn’t include her “amendment to end this illegal war.”
In a normal Congress, the next step in the Pentagon funding fight might include some bipartisan compromises to curb Trump’s war and craft a bill that can get bipartisan votes. Quite a few Republicans don’t like the stupid war either, but they’re afraid of angering Dear Leader.
Instead, Republicans in Congress will try to cram through their third reconciliation bill this year so they can get something passed without needing Democratic votes in the Senate. It wouldn’t be the full NDAA or anything like it, but it would give the Pentagon an additional $67 billion, as well as providing $20 billion to pay off farmers fucked over by Trump’s tariffs. It would also squeeze in some elements of Trump’s beloved voter-suppression bill, the SAVE America Act, as long as they can be dressed up as “budget” items to conform with the limits of the reconciliation process.
With both the late Lindsey Graham and the nearly late Mitch McConnell missing from the Senate, any new last-minute Pentagon bill will still be difficult to pass, especially since so many other Republicans are getting comfortable with hating Trump, too.
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I've never seen so many full grown men askeerd of an 80 year old man in makeup, swollen ankles, and bad hair.
On the principle of praising anything in the direction you figure someone needs to go, okay, well done.
(Now keep going.)