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We Have House Armed Services Committee Democrats To Thank for Trump's Horrific War Budgets - Antiwar.com Original
We Have House Armed Services Committee Democrats To Thank for Trump’s Horrific War Budgets
by Ruth E. Kastner Posted on August 11, 2020
I recently discovered the extent to which Democrats routinely vote for Republican policies and expenditures at the committee level. Such enabling committee-level "yes" votes often fly under the radar, since members of Congress who cast these damaging votes often vote "no" on the House or Senate floor. They then point to their "no" floor votes as evidence of their ostensible opposition to the policy that they just encouraged and enabled by their much more powerful committee "yes" vote.
In the House, a floor vote is only one of about 435, while a committee vote packs a much more powerful punch. For example, the Democratic complement of the House Armed Services Committee is only 31, as one can discover upon visiting the HASC website. (The GOP complement is 26.) Among the smiling faces of these Democratic committee members is Ro Khanna, a self-described "progressive." Khanna has an active presence on social media and in email communications, where he touts his antiwar stance and his staunch opposition to "endless war" and excessive military spending.
The problem? All 31 of these smiling Democrats routinely vote in the HASC for Trump’s wasteful, saber-rattling Pentagon budgets. This includes the most recent exorbitant and highly controversial $741 billion budget as contained in the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Many Democrats have railed against excessive military spending by Trump, in particular during a public health crisis in which many Americans have been laid off, lost their employer-based health care, and face eviction during a deadly pandemic that has already killed over 150,000. While desperately needed aid to working Americans is being held up by a GOP Senate, these 31 Democrats just voted to advance Trump’s military budget to the floor with the amount unchanged and with nearly every provision that Trump wanted. They did the same the previous year, FY2020. Yet ironically, most GOP members of the HASC opposed last year’s Pentagon budget based on their disagreements with Democratic committee members’ amendments. This shows how readily the Democratic majority could have stopped Trump’s hugely excessive Pentagon budget in its tracks had they wished to do so. GOP members feel free to vote to hold up their own President’s budget in committee if they disagree with certain provisions of the Democratic majority. Yet Democratic members seem unwilling to put even temporary brakes on a Trump military budget, even as members of his own party feel free to do so.
We Have House Armed Services Committee Democrats To Thank for Trump’s Horrific War Budgets
by Ruth E. Kastner Posted on August 11, 2020
I recently discovered the extent to which Democrats routinely vote for Republican policies and expenditures at the committee level. Such enabling committee-level "yes" votes often fly under the radar, since members of Congress who cast these damaging votes often vote "no" on the House or Senate floor. They then point to their "no" floor votes as evidence of their ostensible opposition to the policy that they just encouraged and enabled by their much more powerful committee "yes" vote.
In the House, a floor vote is only one of about 435, while a committee vote packs a much more powerful punch. For example, the Democratic complement of the House Armed Services Committee is only 31, as one can discover upon visiting the HASC website. (The GOP complement is 26.) Among the smiling faces of these Democratic committee members is Ro Khanna, a self-described "progressive." Khanna has an active presence on social media and in email communications, where he touts his antiwar stance and his staunch opposition to "endless war" and excessive military spending.
The problem? All 31 of these smiling Democrats routinely vote in the HASC for Trump’s wasteful, saber-rattling Pentagon budgets. This includes the most recent exorbitant and highly controversial $741 billion budget as contained in the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Many Democrats have railed against excessive military spending by Trump, in particular during a public health crisis in which many Americans have been laid off, lost their employer-based health care, and face eviction during a deadly pandemic that has already killed over 150,000. While desperately needed aid to working Americans is being held up by a GOP Senate, these 31 Democrats just voted to advance Trump’s military budget to the floor with the amount unchanged and with nearly every provision that Trump wanted. They did the same the previous year, FY2020. Yet ironically, most GOP members of the HASC opposed last year’s Pentagon budget based on their disagreements with Democratic committee members’ amendments. This shows how readily the Democratic majority could have stopped Trump’s hugely excessive Pentagon budget in its tracks had they wished to do so. GOP members feel free to vote to hold up their own President’s budget in committee if they disagree with certain provisions of the Democratic majority. Yet Democratic members seem unwilling to put even temporary brakes on a Trump military budget, even as members of his own party feel free to do so.