On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted down an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have cut the Pentagon budget by 10%. As Common Dreams staff writer Jake Johnson reports:
"The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment sponsored by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) was 93-324, with 139 Democrats joining 185 Republicans in voting no. The failure of the Lee-Pocan amendment means the final version of the House NDAA will propose a $740.5 military budget for fiscal year 2021, a more than $2 billion increase from the previous year.
"'Ninety-three members of Congress stood together to oppose a bloated $740 billion defense budget,' Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted following the vote. 'Though our amendment didn't pass, progressive power is stronger than ever. We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality.'
"The Senate is expected to vote later Tuesday on a companion to the Lee-Pocan amendment sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
"While voicing disappointment in the amendment's defeat, Win Without War tweeted that just a few years ago it 'would have been unthinkable' for 93 members of Congress to vote in favor of a 10% cut to the Pentagon budget.
"'If we keep up this momentum, there's no doubt: change is coming,' the group said."
In spite of the optimism Pocan and Win Without War, as well as other anti-war advocacy groups, expressed in the wake of the vote, the likelihood of a budget cut to the Pentagon is slim, given the massive influence the military-industrial complex has on Congress. Throughout the 2020 election cycle alone, the defense sector has contributed a total of $8.4 million to Democratic candidates for federal office, as well as $9.42 million to Republican candidates. This is a good indication as to why only a handful of Democrats and no Republicans voted for this amendment. In addition, the sector spent $112.31 million lobbying Congress in 2019 alone.
The money from the sector given to politicians in Washington may also explain why progressives and libertarians, respective factions of the Democratic and Republican parties that should be supportive of cutting Pentagon budget in theory, voted against the amendment. Below is a list of Congressional Progressive Caucus members who opposed it, and how much PAC money they have taken from the sector throughout their respective careers in Congress (note that, for freshman representatives, this data only applies to the current election cycle):
Reps. Gil Cisneros (D-CA), Mike Levin (D-CA), and Andy Kim (D-NJ) also voted against the amendment, and although they have not directly taken defense PAC money, they have respectively taken $15,000, $10,000, and $10,000 from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-MD) AmeriPAC: The Fund for a Greater America, as the leadership PAC has taken $57,500 from defense PACs.
On the Republican side, the House Liberty Caucus consists of libertarian-minded members of the party in Congress, so they should theoretically be in supporting of cutting the Pentagon budget. However, only Rep. Justin Amash (L-MI), the chairman of the caucus, voted for it. The following Liberty Caucus members voted against it, and have taken the following amount from defense PACs throughout their career:
Despite the influence of defense money in politics on this issue, it appears as if anti-war organizations are seeing this as outperforming expectations, and they wish to capitalize on it moving forward.
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