In a 220-197 vote early Friday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the $733 billion 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting the stage for multiple battles, including a party-line fight over reconciling House and Senate versions.
Senate leaders blocked a lot of similar amendments in their version of the NDAA, many of them seen as controversial to the Trump Administration. The House version included a lot of amendments, preemptively defunding an attack on Iran, defunding the Yemen War, and moving to repeal both the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs.
The tough language trying to see Congress reclaim its authority over wars is driving President Trump to threaten a veto if he ends up faced with the House version as the final bill. The House seems determined to stand up for at least some of these amendments.
And that’s where things could get very sticky. President Trump has tended to get around Congressional oversight with vetoes, but the House can hold up military funding, or even try to override the veto in this case. This could set the stage for an ugly standoff over military funding, and whether the president can in any way be reined in on issues of war.
Power of the purse my arse.
“preemptively defunding an attack on Iran, defunding the Yemen War, and moving to repeal both the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs.”
A real peace president would welcome those amendments instead of threatening a veto because of them.
Wouldn’t need to amend at all.
Seen from a slightly different — ie a glass half FULL — perspective …
Either intentionally — but more likely unintentionally (instinctively?) — nevertheless ***EFFECTIVELY*** — Trump is FORCING the Congress to grow a set and reclaim its war-making authority.
[As I have occasionally said, despite our different perspectives, you and I wars, are on the same side.]
The Trump/Bolton good cop/bad cop routine is scaring the crap out of nearly everyone on the planet. Me included. It is most certainly not fun or funny, but fear — real fear, as in “What flavor of post-apocalyptic nightmare would you like?” — sure as hell gets everyone off their complacency. “Concentrates the mind wonderfully.” That makes change possible.
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
This would be the “thank you drunk drivers for the drunk driving laws” theory….
No President would welcome those amendments, because they constrain his power.
No argument. More of the same.
Tulsi Gabbard would support all four of the amendments. She is campaigning on restoring the war making power to Congress.
https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/rep-tulsi-gabbard-stop-trump-starting-war-iran-no-more-presidential-wars
Wake me up when she becomes President and still supports those amendments.
Bolton will have to reach deep down into his old PNAC bag of tricks. To paraphrase their pre-9/11 manifesto, the push for war with Iran “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor.” Problem is, people are on to them this time and it won’t be as easy to pull off a horrible false-flag event like what happened on 9/11.
There is a new PNAC called CNAS and it is bi-partisan for war mongering. I think it became bipartisan during Obama’s war on terror. It is called the Center for a New American Security.
https://www.cnas.org/
Not seeing any heavy hitters in cnas.
Maybe Bolton and Cheney weren’t invited this time.
Guess it may not matter since the policy of “full spectrum dominance” remains alive and well, like a cancer.
To think that this nation pretends to be a democracy is mind-boggling to an outsider.
This is all for show. The NDAA will pass without any of these measures.