So much for the powers of the purse.
Congress may have formally banned the Pentagon from further funding of the NATO Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System (MEADS) in December, but that hasn’t stopped Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel from announcing that the funds will continue anyhow.
“I am pleased we are able to fulfill our commitment,” Hagel said, while other officials insisted the move was an obligation as a NATO member nation and that they could simply fund it whether or not Congress objects.
And they’re going to object. The continuing resolution passed last month included money for “termination costs” for the program, conditioned on them not being used for anything but early termination fees to military contractors. At the time, officials added that “the prohibition in the NDAA is law, and nothing in this bill or report overrides or changes that fact.”
Pentagon officials griped about it at the time, and now they insist they’ll use that money to fund the program instead of its termination. House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing adds that they believe the Pentagon’s move is in direct violation of US law, though it appears they won’t actually be able to do anything about it.
Jennifer Hing adds that they believe the Pentagon’s move is in direct violation of US law, though it appears they won’t actually be able to do anything about it.
Oh yeah, the law has becum very selective in who has standing to bring action against illegal acts and actions……. The law has it's friends and ….well…. others and then there is us the average American taxpayer… Take John Corzine…. He steals a few BILLION from us citizens, but walks free, no charges even… You don't think it coulld be his campaign cash largess that keeps him safe and ABOVE THE LAW….. Everything in America is degrading at an ever more and more alarming rate ….. It's hard to think what is better here in America since we have forsaken all law and order, save what the government decrees and gone on a worldwide killimg spree….., Now American Products come with free blood spatters of murdered children… A real selling point for far too few I believe…. Dying Empires seem to all end thusly…….
Can't do anything about it? How about defund all GI Bill benefits and see how long the Pentagon takes to come around–
The DOD, the Pentagon, the MIC, and the "Merchants of Death" have the same dismissive attitude toward Congressional laws (let alone public opinion) that Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean, had about taxes, "We don't pay taxes (or follow budget laws). Only the little people pay taxes (and little domestic agencies follow budget laws)".
Which certainly underlines a point made by Charles Maier in his fabulously revealing anti-Empire-studies book, "Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors", that Empires keep military and strategic planning out of the hands of democracy — both representatives and the people:
"Thus an empire is rarely premeditated. The divisions it intensifies along its frontier or the skewed rewards it distributes among its citizens at home amount to unplanned inequality. Nonetheless, empire leaves behind a body — the earlier republican body politic now transformed. Even when empire emerges as democracy advances, as in the France of the Third Republic or in Victorian Britain or post-1945 America, it increasingly cordons off overseas military and intelligence commitments from the scrutiny of representative assemblies. Indeed, the domestic victim of empire is not necessarily democracy but the control of war and peace by traditional legislatures."
Charles S. Maier. Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (p. 21). Kindle Edition.
I thought the War Department was short of money with the sequester and all.
Further proof that the United States has actually become a Military dictatorship with the Military ignoring the constitutionally elected civilian congress, Of course it can be blamed on the actions of Bush and his circuvention of Law, allowing the Military to da as it damn well pleases! Congress hac has its own hand in it as well!