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national defense authorization act
As Senate Prepares for NDAA Vote, Progressive Caucus Says It Is 'Past Time' to Slash Pentagon Budget
"This legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Dec 12, 2024
As Senate Democrats prepared to move forward with a procedural vote on the annual defense budget package that passed in the House earlier this week, the Congressional Progressive Caucus outlined its objections to the legislation and called for the Pentagon budget to be cut, with military funding freed up to "reinvest in critical human needs."
CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said following the passage of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2025 (H.R. 5009) that "it should alarm every American taxpayer that we are nearing a trillion-dollar annual budget for an agency rampant with waste, fraud, and abuse."
Jayapal, who was one of 140 lawmakers to oppose the package, emphasized that the Pentagon has failed seven consecutive annual audits.
Despite being the only federal agency to never have passed a federal audit, said Jayapal, the Department of Defense "continues to receive huge boosts to funding every year. Our constituents deserve better."
As Common Dreams reported last month, more than half of the department's annual budget now goes to military contractors that consistently overcharge the government, contributing to the Pentagon's inability to fully account for trillions of taxpayer dollars.
The $883.7 billion legislation that was advanced by the House on Wednesday would pour more money into the Pentagon's coffers. The package includes more than $500 million in Israeli military aid and two $357 million nuclear-powered attack submarine despite the Pentagon requesting only one, and would cut more than $621 million from President Joe Biden's budget request for climate action initiatives.
Jayapal noted that the legislation—which was passed with the support of 81 Democrats and 200 Republicans—also includes anti-transgender provisions, barring the children of military service members from receiving gender-affirming healthcare in "the first federal statute targeting LGBTQ people since the 1990s when Congress adopted 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and the Defense of Marriage Act."
"This dangerous bigotry cannot be tolerated, let alone codified into federal law," said Jayapal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the legislation "has some very good things we Democrats wanted in it, it has some bad things we wouldn't have put in there, and some things that were left out," and indicated that he had filed cloture for the first procedural vote on the NDAA.
The vote is expected to take place early next week, and 60 votes are needed to begin debate on the package.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of exorbitant U.S. military spending, said in a floor speech on Wednesday that he plans to vote no on the budget.
"While middle-class and working-class families are struggling to survive, we supposedly just don't have the financial resources to help them," he said. "We just cannot afford to build more housing, we just cannot afford to provide quality childcare to our kids or to support public education, or to provide healthcare to all."
"But when the military industrial complex and all of their well-paid lobbyists come marching in to Capitol Hill," he continued, "somehow or another, there is more than enough money for Congress to provide them with virtually everything that they need."
Jayapal noted that the funding package includes substantive pay raises for service members and new investments in housing, healthcare, childcare, and other support for their families.
"Progressives will always fight to increase pay for our service members and ensure that our veterans are well taken care of," said Jayapal. "However, this legislation on balance moves our country and our national priorities in the wrong direction."
By cutting military spending, she said, the federal government could invest in the needs of all Americans, not just members of the military, "without sacrificing our national security or service member wages."
"It's past time we stop padding the pockets of price gouging military contractors who benefit from corporate consolidation," said Jayapal, "and reallocate that money to domestic needs."
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Bloat and 'Bigotry': Six Democrats Join With House GOP to Pass $833 Billion Pentagon Budget
“The far-right extremists in Congress and their enablers have made their values clear: bigotry over inclusivity, security, and our climate."
Jun 14, 2024
Previewing what one anti-war group called "a terrifying, hate-driven vision of a U.S. government under undivided conservative control," the Republican-controlled U.S. House on Friday not only passed its latest military spending package of nearly $1 trillion, but included a number of amendments attacking the bodily autonomy and other rights of service members.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was passed in the House largely along party lines, with 217 voting for the $884 billion package and 199 voting against it.
Six Democrats—Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Donald Davis (N.C.), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Mary Peltola (Alaska), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wa.)—joined with the Republican majority to help pass the measure.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, once again noted her disapproval of a bill that places military spending over "investments in domestic priorities, from education to housing, healthcare to childcare," as she has in previous years—but the annual Pentagon funding package drew additional ire for its inclusion of amendments related to abortion rights, transgender healthcare, and other culture war battles.
"For the second year in a row, MAGA House Republicans pursued a path of extremism for the annual Pentagon authorization bill to continue waging their attacks on climate action, reproductive rights, LBGTQ+ rights, and communities of color," said Jayapal. "This bloated $833 billion Pentagon authorization bill approves $8.6 billion in additional tax dollars for an out-of-control military budget, expanding costly and unnecessary weapons systems while banning gender-affirming care, abortion travel, and diversity efforts for servicemembers."
The amendments pushed through by Republicans include one proposed by Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), which would block a Biden administration policy that reimburses members of the military for travel costs they incur when seeking an abortion, and one put forward by Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), which would block funding for gender-affirming medical procedures for service members.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) proposed a ban on any funds in the legislation being used to implement President Joe Biden's climate change executive orders.
Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) proposed placing Pentagon jobs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on a permanent hiring freeze, and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) added an amendment requiring the Reconciliation Monument, a Confederate memorial, to be relocated to Arlington National Cemetery.
On Thursday, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called the latter amendment "disheartening."
"Mr. Clyde is proposing that we return a monument to treason to our national cemetery without any accompanying context or education," said Beyer. "The monument in question is a basic ode to the Confederacy, to romanticize a lost cause."
The Republicans' amendments, said Stephen Miles, president of Win Without War, aimed to "turn the NDAA into a vehicle for numerous far-right, hate-fueled amendments that attack the core rights of our friends, neighbors, and communities."
While doing so, said Miles, the GOP "left positive amendments on the cutting room floor, like needed efforts to repeal the 2002 [Authorization for Use of Military Force], cut the ballooning Pentagon budget, and renew and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to do justice to victims of radiation exposure from nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining."
"The far-right extremists in Congress and their enablers have made their values clear: bigotry over inclusivity, security, and our climate," Miles added. "We thank our progressive allies for pushing for amendments that would have helped everyday people. Now that Republicans have made their decision, we need a unified chorus from Democrats that our basic rights aren't up for debate, and to have these hateful measures stripped from the final bill."
Jayapal added that progressive members of the House were barred from proposing amendments to "protect human rights abroad, reaffirm congressional war powers, strengthen labor and civil rights for service members, and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in military spending.
The NDAA in its current form is unlikely to pass in the Democratic-led Senate, where the Armed Services Committee held a markup this week on its own version of the legislation.
Jayapal expressed hope that after the November elections, the NDAA process will be "led by a Democratic House that allows an open and robust debate on the issues Americans care about—national security and peace, upholding human rights, protecting our servicemembers and their families, and taking on the climate crisis and corporate corruption—not cynical attacks on vulnerable Americans."
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'This Is Wrong': Congress Trying to Ram Through Spying Powers Extension
Including the extension in a must-pass bill, said one critic, "would perpetuate staggering abuses of Americans' privacy, including wrongfully spying on protestors, politicians, journalists, and thousands of others."
Dec 07, 2023
Privacy rights advocates this week are sounding the alarm about a bipartisan congressional effort to imminently force through an extension of warrantless government surveillance powers despite public outrage over a well-documented history of misuse.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is set to expire at the end of the year unless it is reauthorized by Congress. The law only permits warrantless surveillance targeting foreigners located outside the United States, but Americans' data is also collected, and court documents have exposed "chilling" abuse, especially at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
While the FBI has implemented some reforms, for years—but particularly in the months leading up to the looming expiration—campaigners have pressured lawmakers to refuse to reauthorize Section 702 or to only do so with serious changes.
"Congressional leaders should not betray the broad, bipartisan support for surveillance reform by jamming Section 702 into the NDAA."
"To extend warrantless surveillance is to extend the racial profiling of everyday Americans. It's for this reason that we can't tolerate the reauthorization of FISA Section 702—and neither should Congress," AAPI Victory Alliance declared Thursday.
AAPI Victory Alliance is among 92 civil rights and racial justice groups that wrote to federal lawmakers late last month arguing that "including in must-pass legislation any extension would sell out the communities that have been most often wrongfully targeted by these agencies and warrantless spying powers generally."
The Biden administration has been pushing for a Section 702 extension without sweeping reforms. FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed in congressional testimony on Tuesday that "loss of this vital provision, or its reauthorization in a narrowed form, would raise profound risks. For the FBI in particular, either outcome could mean substantially impairing, or in some cases entirely eliminating, our ability to find and disrupt many of the most serious security threats."
On Wednesday evening, U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) filed the conference report of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024. The bipartisan compromise includes a temporary extension, which the Electronic Privacy Information Center called "a shocking attempt to entrench a controversial and sweeping surveillance authority that Congress is actively working to reform."
Sean Vitka, policy director of Demand Progress, agreed that "congressional leaders should not betray the broad, bipartisan support for surveillance reform by jamming Section 702 into the NDAA. It would perpetuate staggering abuses of Americans' privacy, including wrongfully spying on protestors, politicians, journalists, and thousands of others."
The NDAA report came just hours after the House Judiciary Committee voted 35-2 to advance the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act (H.R. 6570)—which Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, called "the strongest surveillance reform passed out of committee since the original FISA bill 45 years ago."
"It will end the pervasive abuse of U.S. person queries, which have been made against protesters, journalists, lawmakers, and campaign donors, among thousands of others," he said, praising the panel's broad bipartisan support for the bill. "At the same time, it is meticulously designed to retain the security value of FISA 702, such as quickly allowing queries with consent to protect victims. We urge the House to promptly bring this bill to the floor and pass it."
On Thursday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence passed the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act, which features an eight-year extension—and, as Roll Callreported, "would require the FBI to get a probable cause warrant only before using a U.S. person term for the purpose of searching for evidence of a crime, a provision that privacy advocates argue only encompasses a small fraction of the searches."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote Thursday in a letter to colleagues that he plans to bring both panels' bills "to the floor under a special rule that provides members a fair opportunity to vote in favor of their preferred measure" next week.
Johnson said that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have committed to working "in good faith on a final reform bill that can be passed in both chambers," which the pair confirmed in a joint statement.
"To provide the necessary time to facilitate the reform process in a manner that will not conflict with our existing appropriations
deadlines and other conflicts, the NDAA conference agreement necessarily includes a short-term extension of the 702 authorities through April 19 of next year," the speaker added, as Schumer moved to set up an NDAA vote next week.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty & National Security Program, was among the rights advocates and lawmakers who highlighted that "it purports to be a 'short-term' reauthorization until April 19, 2024, but make no mistake: leaders are actually extending this abuse-ridden authority INTO APRIL 2025."
"It purports to be a 'short-term' reauthorization until April 19, 2024, but make no mistake: leaders are actually extending this abuse-ridden authority INTO APRIL 2025."
"They claim that Congress needs more time to consider reforms, but that's clearly untrue," Goitein explained on social media, citing the House Judiciary Committee bill. "But even if December 31 came and went with no reauthorization, the government would still be able to conduct surveillance into April 2024. That's because the FISA Court authorizes Section 702 surveillance for one-year periods and the law clearly states that the court's authorizations remain in effect until they expire, regardless of what happens with Section 702 itself."
"The court's April 2023 authorization will thus greenlight surveillance into April 2024," she said. "So why are congressional leaders doing this? Because that four-month extension, in practice, will be a *16-month extension.* Between now and April 19, the administration will go back to the FISA Court and get ANOTHER one-year authorization which means the [government] gets a total of 16 extra months to continue conducting warrantless backdoor searches for Americans' communications."
"How do we know this is what congressional leaders actually intend? Because if they wanted to extend Section 702 for four months WITHOUT creating a de facto 16-month extension, there's a very easy way to do that," she stressed. "They could simply include a provision stating that any FISA Court authorization issued during that four-month period would ALSO expire in April 2024. They're well aware of that option. And they appear to have rejected it."
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