Surprise House Effort to Defund Afghan War Falls Short

Rep. Nadler Led Push That Split Dem Reps Down the Middle

A surprising (and little discussed) effort by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D – NY) to defund the Afghan War was brought before the House of Representatives yesterday, and unfortunately fell well short of its goal, with a 98-331 failure. The vote is still interesting on a number of fronts, however.

The vote would have attached an amendment to the budget which would reduce the Afghan War spending from the $100+ billion it currently costs annually to a level of $10 billion, which is the amount the Pentagon insists it would cost to withdraw the troops from the nation.

Notably, however, the vote was surprisingly close amongst Democratic Congressmen, with 91 voting in favor of ending the occupation to 99 voting against. It was the Republican side which saw overwhelming rejection, with only 7 GOP Congressmen voting to end the war (Reps. Campbell, Coble, Duncan, Johnson, Jones, Paul and Rohrabacher).

Perhaps the biggest disappointment was that the freshmen “Tea Party” Congressmen, who were reportedly so keen on reducing the budget deficit, voted unanimously in favor of continuing the occupation, despite the clear and dramatic savings that ending the war would have provided.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.