Here we go again
Fergwadsakes:
House Republican leaders are now betting they can come up with 218 GOP votes for the FY2024 defense authorization bill after essentially ending any hope of a bipartisan deal with Democrats.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy is giving the House Freedom Caucus and other conservative hardliners what they’ve demanded all week — dozens of “culture war” amendment votes on the $886 billion NDAA package. Conservatives threatened to derail the defense-authorization bill unless they got these votes.
The House will take up these amendments today in what promises to be a long and bitterly partisan slugfest. McCarthy wants to vote on final passage for the NDAA bill by Friday.
You can see the list of NDAA amendments here.
These GOP amendments run the gamut of conservative talking points. They cover everything from the Pentagon’s abortion policy, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, Covid-19 vaccines, critical race theory and transgender-related medical services. Ukraine, China and Taiwan are also key amendment topics.
If some or all of these poison-pill provisions are added to the defense authorization legislation — which Congress has enacted every year since the early 1960s — then Democrats will oppose the measure. The House Armed Services Committee initially passed the bill by an overwhelming 58-1 vote on June 22.
The most high-profile amendment is authored by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas). Jackson’s proposal would bar the Pentagon “from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has been holding up dozens of military promotions for months in a bid to force the Pentagon to rescind the abortion policy.
There are several amendments designed to block or reduce military aid to Ukraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will get a vote on her proposal to cut $300 million in Ukraine funding.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has an amendment to prohibit DoD-run schools “from purchasing and having pornographic and radical gender ideology books in their libraries.” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) wants to block the removal of Confederate names from military bases. And Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is seeking to prevent the Pentagon from implementing Biden’s climate change executive orders.
The House Rules Committee met late Wednesday night to pass the rule covering this second tranche of controversial amendments. During that session, Republicans defeated numerous Democratic attempts to add their own amendments to the approved list. Of the 80 amendments cleared for potential floor votes, just four were from Democrats.
Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also said there was a “side agreement” that the House would move forward in September with repealing a number of outstanding resolutions authorizing the use of military force (AUMFs). This includes the AUMF passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. This will be replaced by another resolution, Cole indicated.
Democrats blasted McCarthy and GOP leaders for — in their view — allowing a small faction of conservatives to essentially control what’s going on in the House.
“This is a very sad night,” complained Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), top Democrat on the Rules Committee. “It’s outrageous that a small minority of MAGA extremists is dictating how we’ll proceed. This is not how this place should work.”
McGovern was particularly upset that a bipartisan proposal banning the United States from providing cluster munitions to other countries has been revised to only banning them from being given to Ukraine. Biden just agreed to send these weapons to Ukraine for its summer counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Adding these conservative provisions to the bill will make cutting a deal with the Senate and White House much more difficult. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to file a motion today to proceed to that chamber’s version of the NDAA bill beginning next week. Schumer is looking to pass the bill before the August recess.
Now let’s turn our attention to the FY2024 spending bills. The fight over these 12 appropriations bills is going to make the NDAA flap look like child’s play.
By today, House Republicans will have unveiled all 12 of their proposed FY2024 spending bills, including the critical Labor-HHS and Commerce-Justice-Science packages. Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) has scheduled full committee markups for eight of the bills. GOP leaders hope to bring one or two bills to the floor before the August recess.
Yet because these bills are set at the FY2022 spending level — not the level agreed to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act — and Defense, Homeland Security and veterans’ programs were spared or even bumped up, House GOP appropriators have made tens of billions of dollars of cuts to social spending programs. Democrats are outraged by this decision and warn it will backfire.
“I am fearful … that we are on a trajectory, at best, for continuing resolutions. And at worst, a government shutdown,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the ranking Appropriations Democrat, warned during a Wednesday markup.
The clowns are running the show. And they are stupid, evil, clowns.