It’s one of the few bills on Capitol Hill to reliably receive strong bipartisan support each year. But on Wednesday, with hostilities once again intensifying in the Middle East, Democrats took a rare stand on the annual Pentagon policy bill.
The House narrowly passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, 216-212, with 209 Republicans and six Democrats and one Independent voting yes, and seven Republicans and 205 Democrats voting no.
The defense policy bill authorizes roughly $1.15 trillion in Pentagon spending — a massive increase over current funding levels — includes up to a 7% pay raise for the military, expands a number of defense acquisition programs and officially renames the Department of Defense into the Department of War. Republicans also attached the controversial SAVE America Act to the bill.
But Democrats treated the vote as their latest — and perhaps strongest — opportunity to curtail President Donald Trump’s ongoing war with Iran.
Last month, Congress approved a war powers resolution to force an end to the hostilities. The enforceability of that measure, however, has proved uncertain legally and nonexistent in practice.
Trump didn’t sign the measure — the form of the legislation didn’t require his signature — and he has continued the war as though Congress has no role to play. (Republicans, for their part, have accepted the Trump administration’s argument that the 90-day clock under the War Powers Resolution reset during the brief U.S.-Iran ceasefire.)
Faced with that intransigence, Democrats are looking for another way to rein in the president.
“The power of the purse and stopping the funding is our most important and to some degree our last leverage point,” Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y. — an Army veteran — told MS NOW.
“This is an even more important vote in many ways than the war powers resolution,” he said.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., said she had no interest in “adding to our deficit with a war that has no plan,” particularly after the U.S. lost another three servicemembers in the last week.
And when MS NOW asked Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., about the annual defense bill, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee replied with a question of his own.
“Since this war of choice started, are the American people and-or any of our allies better off? Is Israel better off?” he asked.
He answered the question himself: “No.”
But despite the measure passing the House, the fight over the annual defense bill is far from over.
Senate Democrats succeeded last week in derailing their chamber’s version of the bill, warning they will continue blocking it unless Republicans agree to legal guardrails limiting the war.
The bill will likely be the subject of closed-door negotiations in the months ahead.
Some House Democrats expressed hope that, with the August recess around the corner and lawmakers poised to spend the coming weeks back home campaigning, Republicans may begin feeling political pressure to support new limits on the conflict.
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Col., predicted his colleagues across the aisle are “about to go home and get hammered in their districts by their constituents for a lot of things.”
“My door is open,” Crow said. “If they want to join our effort to rein this administration in and end this conflict, I’m all yours.”
Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Md., said Republicans are “going to have to ask themselves some hard questions of when is the point at which we will stop giving these blank checks, literally and figuratively, to this administration.”
“We have billions of dollars for bombs, but absolutely nothing for basics,” Olszewski said.
And Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., told MS NOW that if Republicans are looking at the same polling as he is, they know the war and its trickle-down effects — including higher gas prices — are “hurting them significantly” going into the November elections.
Still, he cautioned, “I don’t see a lot of profiles encouraged on the other side of the aisle.”
Of course, not every Republican has been comfortable giving Trump a free hand.
Some GOP lawmakers — or lawmakers aligned with the GOP — have publicly questioned the conflict or called for Congress to play a greater role in shaping it.
Some of them voted against the defense bill. Others have shown opposition to a second measure — the framework for a third reconciliation package — which the House is also voting on Wednesday.
House Republican leaders are hoping to use reconciliation — which allows them to bypass Democrats in the Senate — to pass tens of billions of dollars in additional Pentagon funding to replenish weapons stockpiles depleted during the Iran war.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. — who has voted with Democrats to advance war powers resolutions — opposes both measures.
In the days leading up to the NDAA vote, he argued lawmakers should not allow the administration to “bankrupt the country and give them a tacit approval to continue the war by funding them.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., has also spoken out against the reconciliation framework, arguing it was a “missed opportunity” for Congress to have provided “input” on the war.
“This is way more important than and way more impactful than something like a war powers resolution, which has no teeth,” Kiley said. “This is the way that Congress can actually exercise its Article I authority.”
“If we don’t take that opportunity, then I don’t think we’re serving the American people well on an issue that is of paramount importance to our country,” he continued.
While Democrats have undoubtedly shifted their efforts to end the war to the power of the purse, they are also moving ahead with another batch of war powers votes.
Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY., announced he’d force Republicans to once again go on the record for the war.
“Trump needs to stop this catastrophe and bring our troops home, and Senate Republicans can’t let him off the hook until he does,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday.
And House Democrats are also teeing up another war powers vote for Thursday.
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