Update: The final NDAA bill passed the House on Wednesday 377-48. The vote can be found here.
The House version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) set aside an irresponsibly large amount of money for military spending, but it also added some antiwar amendments and other very basic limitations. The House and Senate versions have now been reconciled into a final bill, and materially all of the limitations that the House voted on and approved have been stripped away, in favor of a $738 billion bill that continues spending, but makes no attempt to rein in the military in any serious way.
The House bill had included the latest attempt to use the power of the purse to end US military involvement in Yemen, something that both houses had attempted to do in a War Powers Act resolution that was previously vetoed by President Trump. That language will not be in the final bill.
Nor will House language from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) that said any US attack on Iran could only come with the passage of an authorization for the use of military force against Iran. That is to say, it preemptively aimed to forbid an unauthorized US attack on Iran. The language is gone, and while theoretically the president is meant to be forbidden from unauthorized attacks, that’s not the way recent administrations have treated the law.
The bill also removes language that forbade the Pentagon from researching low-yield nuclear weapons. Some officials had been advocating the development of “more usable” nukes, despite concerns that this would mean the usage of such arms would become more common.
At its core, a lot of the language in the House bill was aimed at giving Congress more specific say on how the military is to carry out certain operations, and more importantly certain things that it is absolutely not to do. This was presented as necessary because Congressional Democrats were worried about President Trump acting unilaterally.
In the end, more or less all of this was stripped away, even backing away from border wall restrictions that were one of the first things put in place in the House bill.
Language the administration was supportive of, by contrast, did much better in reconciliation. Language sanctioning Russia for building a natural gas pipeline to Germany survived, and the bill even gives the administration its long-sought Space Force.
The expectation is that this final NDAA will be voted on in the House on Wednesday, and in the Senate some days later. It will almost certainly be signed by the president, since anything remotely objectionable to him has already been forgotten.
So the GHOULS have violated the Constitution they swore to uphold,,Hmm,,sounds like an impeachable offense to me!! Terminate the DC GHOULS, they are lower than cockroaches! 🙁 Long live the 2nd!
right then. that makes $860 billion for 2018, $750 billion for 2019 and now $738 billion for 2020.
$2.35 TRILLION for uncle samuel’s military in only 3 years.
better make some more cuts to the food stamp program, boys!
“If passed, the bill would formally establish President Donald Trump’s proposed “Space Force” as a sixth armed service and bring total annual Pentagon spending increases under Trump to more than $130 billion.”
I wonder if Raimondo has rolled over and wretched.
This is even more frightening than all that has gone before, and to think that the “Democratic Party” is going ahead with the impeachment farce based on matters of infinitesimal importance compared with the survival of us all.
We may not even have to wait for the 2020 election if world peace is treated like this by the nation considering itself a model for others. End times???
Well if you want to take the bible or the quran literally or even metaphorically then maybe. It appears that the graven images of Jesus and America held by American Zionists are juicing all the non believers in a giant meat grinder centered around ‘jews’ in the ancient land of the Israelites….The four horsemen of Pestilence, Famine, Death and War seem to have been unleashed by the Millennial style christians in some sacrificial spell meant to summon their Lord and Savior.
The precondition that “any US attack on Iran could only come with the passage of an authorization for the use of military force against Iran” WAS REMOVED, and the bill passed.
Yes, that’s what our Zionist masters in occupied Palestine had told the vassals in DC to do. Damn the constitution and damn international law. You gotta do what the masters say. Oooops I am an antisemite now?
No, JDo, you’re not. The terms “anti-Semite and anti-Semitism” have been overused so much that they’re no longer relevant.
Despite what the masters say, the US Constitution is THE LAW OF THE LAND, and all those who violate it are NOT patriots, they’re the total opposite.
Green Light given. Iran – prepare.
During the panic and then ensuing patriotic blood lust of American public calling for revenge after towers fell, Congress voluntarily signed away what previously had been their sole responsability to Declare War, into the hands of the Executive branch, and the peoples cheered.
The wording about War Against Terror stated Executive Branch could hensefort use any and all means, a bill not completed in writing nor read fully by any in eithernHouses of Congress.
By that cowardly act of Congress The end of Congressional powers to limit the Executive Branch ended and they have since loosened the pocket books of peopled Treasury into the hands of the Military Industrial- Scientific, and financial system into the Executive Branch control
Congress playing word games as they pretend to try and limit US constant warfare, while each profiting in supporting it.
State Department is now more powerfull than both Houses.of Congress, andbanti President since knows they have Congress by the short hairs
There is no legal way for the Peoples House to regain what they and the irrational American Public gave away, self government of a Representative Republic that they had allowed to deteriorate into a ” Democracy”.
Sure there is a legal way, they can pass a resolution ending an undeclared war then Impeach convict and sentence to death the president when he fails to cease waging that war. Of course this wont happen unless the 50% of voters who are so called independents all get some wild hair in their ass and replace their congressmen with libertarians across the board….
What is legal under our present government?
Read the portions of our original Constitution, rules that allowed the way bills can be presented, and requirments for passage and you will see no comparison to todays procedures.
Legal? The very act that Both Houses of Congress granted to the Executive Branch, the dole responsability of Congress to decide War or not by, numbers of yay and nay Declaration, was an illegal act under the Constitution, unconstitutional.
Yet there is left one way to regain the War Powers clause back into Congressional hands, and that
can only be done by a certain number of States joining together to present a singular resolution passed by all states, meaning no variables injected by an individual (s) State, not one word different, a petition for convening a Constitutional Convention.
Why anyone thinks by doing so would stop US war making means they know not the character or the true way ways of how power is protected and projected within US Federal and its powers over the individual States political system.
The very Act that set aside Washinton as a seperate District of Columbia was unconstitutional, and yet we the commons act as if it is the sole and final arbiter over all States and Territories.
Yep. “A republic if you can keep it.”
No anti-war measures permitted in the US Congress or any other branch of US government.
At least Tulsi Gabbard voted against it
What Constitution?
At its founding, why did each State reserve unto themselves the position of Law and Rule making body within their state borders?
Why were the Bill of Rights incorporated as first 10 Amendments, and what happened to the First Constitution, ARTICLES of CONFEDERATION?
Why are there two seperate Houses of Congress and just what diffeernces in each purpose, powers and limits, from then and now.
Who actually writes the Bills introduced in Congress, and where exactly do the ideas originate for such Bills, in the offices of Senators, in Congressional committees, or outside and by non elected entities?
What were reasons and purposes behind
forming the District of Columbia, and was it Constitutionaly legal to do so?
Lots of talk about an instrument. Constitution , that never existed in reality only in perceptions among the commons.