Pentagon Funding Amendment
On Tuesday the House of Representatives voted down an amendment that would have cut the Pentagon budget by 10%.
The National Defense Authorization Act addition (which was sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Mark Pocan) was pretty modest, as it would have merely reduced Pentagon spending to its 2017 level. Nonetheless, the proposal was rejected by a vote of 93-324. Not a single Republican supported the amendment and 139 Democrats joined them to vote against it.
On the day of the vote, NBC published an op-ed written by Pocan and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, connecting military spending cuts to the government’s embarrassing COVID-19 response. “Every dollar wasted at the Pentagon is a dollar not being spent on test kits, personal protective equipment or contact tracing. Every handout to Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman is money that could have been spent on ending this pandemic, keeping small businesses afloat and staving off an economic meltdown,” it reads.
Despite the defeat, progressives hailed the vote as an important moment. “A House vote to cut the Pentagon by 10% just failed 93-324. But this is the first time in decades that Congress has considered a significant cut to Pentagon spending. The military-industrial complex will fall. We will end our addiction to endless, costly wars,” tweeted the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen.
“While it didn’t pass, this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. If we keep up this momentum, there’s no doubt: change is coming,” the group Win Without War tweeted.
New polling indicates that Democrats who support these measures are acting with the support of most voters. A Data for Progress survey found that 57% of voters support cutting 10% of the military budget and spending it on the country’s domestic needs.
Over at Sludge, Donald Shaw and David Moore took a look at campaign contributions to the House Dems who voted against the reduction and found that they took in 3.4x more money from the defense industry. “On average, the Democrats who voted against the amendment have received $29,731 in contributions from the defense industry since January 2019, while Democrats voting for the amendment have received, on average, $8,800 from the industry during that period, according to a Sludge analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics,” they write. One important caveat here: these numbers don’t include donations to PACs that support these candidates, nor do they include contributions from outside groups or lobbyists. Therefore, it’s pretty easy to conclude that the military-industrial complex has actually had a far deeper impact on these lawmakers than the numbers indicate.
On Wednesday, it was time for the Senate to vote on the reduction. This effort has been led by Bernie Sanders and (perhaps surprisingly) endorsed by Chuck Schumer, but it also failed. The final vote there was 23-77, with 23 Democrats rejecting the proposal. The move was actually supported by a number of former presidential candidates in addition to Sanders. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Amy Klobuchar all voted for it, but potential VP nominee Kamala Harris voted against it.
Afghanistan Amendment
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s amendment to bring US troops home from Afghanistan was also rejected. 103 Democrats joined the GOP to defeat that one. The would have assured that the 8,600 remaining troops would have been removed by April 2021.
An interesting component to this one. Omar’s proposal had to include language about stripping away a number of provisions that were inserted into the NDAA by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Jason Crow (D-CO) and passed by the House Armed Services Committee overwhelmingly. Admittedly there’s a lot happening these days, but these provisions received very little attention. One notable exception is an Intercept piece published earlier this month by Glenn Greenwald. Here’s a bit of it:
The imposed conditions are by no means trivial: for these troop reductions from Afghanistan to be allowed, the Defense Department must be able to certify, among other things, that leaving Afghanistan ‘will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan’ and ‘will not compromise or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing United States counter terrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated forces.’
Greenwald goes on to detail how Trump’s plan to withdraw some of the troops, and the (seemingly dubious) Russia bounty story, helped coalesce Washington’s pro-war faction. Win Without War executive director Stephen Miles cited this development while speaking with Common Dreams:
We are deeply disappointed by today’s vote The House passed a nearly identical provision several years ago with near unanimous Democratic support. Far too many House Democrats wrongly viewed this somehow as a vote on Donald Trump rather than a vote to end our nation’s longest war. Frankly, they need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. They should be able to oppose Donald Trump and end endless wars all at the same time.
Muslim Ban Amendment
Let’s wrap up on a positive note. On Wednesday, the House voted to repeal the Trump administration’s travel ban 233-183. The legislation probably won’t advance in the GOP-controlled Senate, but it’s an important moment nonetheless. As the group Muslim Advocates points out on Twitter, it’s the first Muslim civil rights bill in American history.
“There were hundreds of advocacy organizations that never let up and gave credibility to this movement to #RepealTheBan. We still have a long way to fight against the hate agenda coming out of this Administration,” tweeted Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who presided over the vote.
“Trump said he wanted ‘a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,’ Today, as the only Congresswoman from one of those countries, I was beyond proud to vote against his hateful ban,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar.
On Monday, Joe Biden repeated his pledge to overturn the ban if elected president.
Odds & Ends
? The left continues to rack up electoral wins in New York. This week multiple insurgent candidates declared victories in state Assembly races, a number of them DSA-endorsed socialists. “It looks like the political landscape may only get worse for real estate,” lamented one local trade publication.
In my old neighborhood of Astoria, 29-year-old Muslim and foreclosure prevention counselor Zohran Mamdani prevailed. During the campaign, Mamdani criticized incumbent Aravella Simotas for co-sponsoring an anti-BDS resolution and attending a pro-Israel rally during the 2012 bombardment of Gaza. In May, Mamdani composed a Twitter thread detailing the difference between him and his opponent on the issue:
Not only is our district is one of the most progressive in New York, it’s also home to one of the most vibrant Muslim communities in NYC. But our voices are so unheard that our leaders think nothing of erasing the violence suffered by our Palestinian brothers & sisters. Some will ask what the occupation of Palestine has to do with a local race in Astoria. But they only ask when a candidate speaks out against that violence. If an incumbent holds a press conference to celebrate it, no questions are asked. That’s why we can’t be silent.
?️ A new poll from Target-Insyght shows Rep. Rashida Tlaib up 28 points on her challenger Brenda Jones.
?? DMFI has a new poll showing that the vast majority of U.S. voters are pro-Israel and that most Democrats want to maintain or increase military aid to the country. I’m not sure who DMFI thinks it is fooling here. The survey was conducted by the president of the pro-Israel lobbying group via landline and a complete outlier compared to other polls on topic.
? Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson have a piece at In These Times about the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) efforts to partner with progressive groups. The ADL “is not an anti-hate speech organization or a civil rights organization,” they write, “It is, rather, a pro-Israel lobbying group specifically tasked with protecting Israel from leftwing criticism by co-opting the language of anti-racism to smear critics of Israel as bigots.”
?? Rachel Cohen has a piece at Jewish Currents on how the Israel/Palestine conflict is impacting the Minnesota primary between incumbent Ilhan Omar and challenger Antone Melton-Meaux: “Perhaps the clearest policy difference between the two candidates on Israel/Palestine concerns conditioning military aid to Israel. Omar supports conditioning aid if Israel pursues annexation—a position shared by a small minority of progressive Democrats in Congress, including Bernie Sanders. Melton-Meaux says he too opposes annexation, but would not condition aid as a way to pressure Israel.”
? The Detroit Lions’ Oday Aboushi has joined an American Muslims for Palestine campaign to get pro-Palestine language in the platforms of the two major parties. In 2013, Aboushi became the first Palestinian-American to be drafted to the NFL. Mansur Shaheen profiled Aboushi for Mondoweiss last year, you can read it here.
?? This week we reported on a Jewish United Fund (JUF) board meeting from 2016, where attendees watched a PowerPoint presentation that warned Israel supporters to “watch and worry about” the growing number of US Muslims and those becoming “more sophisticated and integrated.”
Stay Safe Out There,
Michael
