Much as Tea Party Republicans played with fire to take symbolic votes against raising the debt ceiling in the 2010’s, at the risk of tanking our economy, some MA members of Congress did the same with the recent NDAA reauthorization and voted with the likes of Josh Hawley to sustain Trump’s veto. It’s sadly unsurprising that a routine bipartisan bill that literally funds our troops, gives them long overdue raises and hazard pay, and finally removed the names of Confederate generals from American bases was vetoed by this spiteful lame duck president. What is more surprising is the number of local progressive leaders who voted to sustain Trump’s veto.
It also included landmark amendments protecting veterans from sexual assault, providing PPE for all DoD workers including civilian VA nurses and doctors, and vaccine distribution. This was a critical bipartisan Bill that could not be amended in this session of Congress. Had Trumps veto been sustained, it would have led to a needless shutdown of the DOD and the various entities affiliated with it.
There are valid progressive reasons to criticize the DOD procurement process and elements of the NDAA that run afoul of a progressive foreign policy, but the time to make those criticisms was during the amendment process to the initial legislation. I might add Sen. Warren herself has done this in the past and also this year was the key leader in getting those bases renamed. Which is why it’s all the more surprising she voted to sustain Trump’s veto which was largely because of her own amendment to this very bill.
Perhaps with a Democratic Senate, better priorities can be put into next years law. Instead, usually reasonable people like Sen. Markey, Sen. Warren, Rep. Pressley, Rep. Kennedy, and Rep. McGovern sided with President Trump and against Democratic leaders like Sen. Jack Reed and President-elect Biden who demanded a quick passage of this critical funding bill. I am left wondering why.
Can you explain what is wrong here?
Suppressing a rant out of respect for what I believe to be your capacity for intellectual rigor.
JC?
Simple. The only leverage that progressives had to force a vote on the $2000 stimulus checks was to hold up the defense department authorization. That’s why Sen Sanders was holding it up.
Stimulus is critical to millions of Americans. It’s Biden, Harris, Reed and the rest of the Democrats who caved in to Mitch McConnell who should be ashamed.
I have rarely seen a post on this blog which has had things more completely wrong.
How does joining the Senate minority sustaining Trumps veto hold it up to stop the stimulus? Even if Pelosi and Schumer whipped for that, the NDAA fails and we still do not have a stimulus. The fault lies with the senior senator from Kentucky.
If a majority of Senators refuse to pass the NDAA until there is an up or down vote on the $2000 stimulus, then there will be be an up or down vote.
If McConnell really wants to go in history as the only majority leader in history who couldn’t pass an NDAA, let it happen.
If the Democrats win the Senate this week, watch how quickly they find another Republican with supernatural powers who won’t let them actually accomplish anything.
It isn’t clear to me that Georgia voters — especially Georgia Republican voters — would welcome blocking the NDAA. The most likely scenario, even if the override had been blocked, would have been that the $2,000 stimulus would have come up for a vote and been defeated, and the NDAA successfully overridden after that.
This was another stunt by Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders to attempt to embarrass congressional Republicans. It was NEVER going to actually become law, and they knew that when they put it forward.
If Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader between now and 2022, no supernatural powers are needed to derail everything that the incoming administration wants to do — including restoring independence, integrity, and the rule of law to the DoJ.
I want to see Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Sanders, along with the rest of the elected Democrats in the House and Senate, actually doing something about the several grave existential threats to America that we currently face.
Agreed and I’m disappointed that four local progressives went along with Sanders hair brained symbolic scheme. Fortunately unlike Josh Hawley’s scheme, it’s not endangering our democracy. Like Josh Hawley, these senators and congressmen were smart enough to know better.
So under this scenario then Pelosi and Schumer get blamed for “defunding the military” for 3-4 weeks, right before the Georgia runoff, all to make a symbolic point that leads to no change on the substance of the checks getting to Americans. Now Georgia voters can see that their Senators lied about the 2k checks and are servants of the Do Nothing McConnell. I think winning those seats is smarter politics than the the play with fire symbolism you prefer.
Is the NDAA vote actually important? It sounds like you are saying that what is really important is that Democrats don’t get blamed for any delay, which in itself would be inconsequential.
Party leaders like Schumer, who appear to be more concerned that aid to Ukraine might be temporarily interrupted with providing needed relief for Americans, reinforce the charge that the Democratic party has a secret agenda which it is hiding.
There might be more respect for Democrats who stood up for what they believed. That is, if they do care about Americans.
The other possibility, which is looking more and more like the truth every day is best summed up by this quote from James St Clair.
“+ In order to understand the sometimes perplexing nuances of the US political economy, you first have to realize that the people who manage it believe as an article of faith that the poor have too much money and the rich not enough.”