The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) stands at $733 billion in the House, and on Thursday will be facing votes on some amendments, including multiple amendments related to ending the US involvement in the Yemen War. The House Democratic leadership is expressing concern that the progressives will derail the NDAA with their many amendments.
Progressive Democrats are particularly interested in pushing amendments to limit the president’s war-making powers, and most are confident this will survive, despite some leaders resisting such moves.
Several of the amendments are directly related to the US war in Yemen, with lawmakers wanting to use the power of the purse to enforce limits on the administration’s war-making powers in the face of previous vetoes.
Rep. Ro Khanna is pushing one such amendment, which would enforce a War Powers Resolution already passed declaring the Yemen War unauthorized and would prohibit any funding for the unauthorized war, or supplying any spare parts to the Saudi-UAE coalition to participate in the war.
Another amendment, by Reps Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Justin Amash (I-MI) aims to block arms sales to the Saudis and the UAE, while Rep. Lieu is also offering an amendment to stop in-air refueling of planes attacking Yemen. Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI) is calling for the Pentagon to report to Congress on civilian casualties in the Saudi War in Yemen.
The White House was already threatening to veto the House version of the NDAA. These threats were before the Yemen amendments were voted on, and with these expected to easily pass, the veto threats will just grow.
The Senate is also moving efforts to try to pare back sales of US arms to the Saudis. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) expressed annoyance that the Secretary of State was treating Congressional review of arms sales as optional, and something they could just circumvent to avoid answering tough questions.
If Trump skirts a Yemen funding restriction, we could see a new Contra style scandal.
It looks like we now have some anti war democrats . They should not hurt this peace maker Trump ..But where were these anti war democrats when Obama was bombing everything in Libya with his no fly zone .
Here is an interesting look at how the Pentagon is changing its strategy for fighting wars:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-american-militarys-new-trojan-horse.html
This new capability will cost taxpayers at least $135 billion but it is not clear how this will defeat the rapidly modernizing forces of both China and Russia.
I believe you are aright about both China and Russia having a rapidly modernizing military forces . For one thing they are absolute partners on sharing all military technology . Money dose not seem to have much to do with military strength This seems to be more true for Russia than anybody else . The Russians have a long history of top notch weapons more so than anything else . remember the Russia AK47 machine gun , maybe the cheapest most reliable machine gun ever made , the Russian tank , the mig fighter jet . Today the Russian rocket engines are the best for powering satellites and missiles into outer space . This has very little to do with money as the entire Russian economy is smaller than the state of California . Russia is a relatively poor country with average income of about 1/3 of the average U.S. personal income .Putin has prepared his country to fight NATO and today he is so confident in his war equipment that he cut his military budget to around 40 billion dollars a year . Our military budget is around 750 billion and we are afraid we are not spending enough to confront Russia and China . NATO started this war with Russia and China about 20 years ago in Yugoslavia . They left Yugoslavia defeated but very united for the next confrontation . There is a myth the Chinese are not very capable at inventions and the Chines have to steal their intellectual property . I don’t believe this myth will turn out to be true . Now days the Chinese have the most engineers in the world and even if this myth should turn out to be true the Chinese have the Russians giving them everything they have . to fixup and modernize .