Mr. Speaker I rise to oppose what will be the final National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) I will face as a Member of the US House
of Representatives. As many of my colleagues are aware, I have always
voted against the NDAA regardless of what party controls the House. Far
from simply providing an authorization for the money needed to defend
this country, which I of course support, this authorization and its many
predecessors have long been used to fuel militarization, enrich the
military industrial complex, expand our empire overseas, and purchase
military and other enormously expensive equipment that we do not need
and in large part does not work anyway. They wrap all of this mess up in
false patriotism, implying that Members who do not vote for these
boondoggles do not love their country.
The military industrial complex is a jigsaw puzzle of seemingly
competing private companies; but they are in reality state-sponsored
enterprises where well-connected lobbyists, usually after long and
prosperous careers in the military or government, pressure Congress to
fund pet projects regardless of whether we can afford them or whether
they are needed to defend our country. This convenient arrangement is
the welfare of the warfare state.
Because of the false perception that we must pass this military spending
authorization each year or our men and women in uniform will go hungry,
Congress has over the years taken the opportunity to pack it with other
items that would have been difficult to pass on their own. This is
nothing new on Capitol Hill. In the last few years, however, this
practice has taken a sinister turn.
The now-infamous NDAA for fiscal year 2012, passed last year, granted
the president the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens
without charge, without access to an attorney, and without trial. It is
difficult to imagine anything more un-American than this attack on our
Constitutional protections. While we may not have yet seen the
widespread use of this unspeakably evil measure, a wider application of
this “authority” may only be a matter of time.
Historically these kinds of measures have been used to bolster state
power at the expense of unpopular scapegoats. The Jewish citizens of
1930s Germany knew all about this reprehensible practice. Lately the
scapegoats have been mostly Muslims. Hundreds, perhaps many more, even
Americans, have been held by the US at Guantanamo and in other secret
prisons around the world.
But this can all change quickly, which makes it all the more dangerous.
Maybe one day it will be Christians, gun-owners, home-schoolers, etc.
That is why last year, along with Reps. Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and
others, we attempted to simply remove the language from the NDAA (sec.
1021) that gave the president this unconstitutional authority. It was a
simple, readable amendment. Others tried to thwart our straightforward
efforts by crafting elaborately worded amendments that in practice did
noting to protect us from this measure in the bill. Likewise this year
there were a few celebrated but mostly meaningless attempts to address
this issue. One such effort passed in the senate version of this bill.
The conferees have simply cut it out. The will of Congress was thus
ignored by a small group of Members and Senators named by House and
Senate leadership.
There are many other measures in this NDAA Conference Report to be
concerned about. It continues to fund our disastrous wars in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere for example.
The Conference Report contains yet another round of doomed-to-fail new
sanctions against Iran. These are acts of war against Iran without
actually firing a shot. But this time the House and Senate conferees are
going further than that. The report contains language that pushes the
US as close to an actual authorization for the use of force against Iran
as we can get. The Report “…asserts that the U.S. should be prepared to
take all necessary measures, including military action if required, to
prevent Iran from threatening the U.S., its allies, or Iran’s neighbors
with a nuclear weapon and reinforces the military option should it prove
necessary.”
This kind of language just emboldens Iran’s enemies in the region to
engage in increasingly reckless behavior with the guarantee that the US
military will step in if they push it too far. That is an unwise move
for everyone concerned.
This Conference Report contains increased levels of foreign military
aid, including an additional half-billion dollars in missile assistance
to an already prosperous Israel and some $300 million to help an
increasingly prosperous Russia control its chemical, nuclear, and
biological weapons. And Russia does not even want the money!
Overall, this authorization will give the president even more money for
military activities next year than he requested. At a time when the news
has been dominated by reports of our budget crisis, the “fiscal cliff,”
and the “need” to increase taxes on Americans, Congress is foolishly
spending even more on the military budget than the administration wants!
I suppose that is what counts as a reduction in the language of
Washington.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this, and all future, reckless and
dangerous military spending bills that are destroying our national
security by destroying our economy.
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