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MIAMI, FLORIDA - JUNE 27: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) speaks to the media after the second night of the first Democratic presidential debate on June 27, 2019 in Miami, Florida. A field of 20 Democratic presidential candidates was split into two groups of 10 for the first debate of the 2020 election, taking place over two nights at Knight Concert Hall of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, hosted by NBC News, MSNBC, and Telemundo. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Original article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/9/2068440/-Defense-contractors-handful-of-powerful-men-overrule-large-bipartisan-group-of-lawmakers Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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Pentagon, contractors, 'handful of powerful men' overrule large bipartisan group of lawmakers
Joan McCarter, Daily Kos Staff Thursday December 09, 2021 · 3:53 PM EST Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has spearheaded a years-long push to overhaul the military justice system, particularly how sexual assault allegations are handled. She’s garnered widespread bipartisan support, even from some of the members of the extreme right in the Senate, but despite that support she was thwarted again in the compromise National Defense Authorization Act the chairs and ranking members of the defense committees hammered out over the last week. Despite the fact that 44 senators and 22 members of the House—ranging from Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Tommy Tuberville on the far, far right of the Senate to Reps. Barbara Lee, Jackie Speier, and Karen Bass—wrote to the chairs, urging them to keep Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act, as passed by the Senate, in the bill. In addition to addressing the deficiencies in addressing sexual assaults in the military, the bill reformed racial disparities in the military system. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus stressed that, under the current system, prosecution decisions are made by disproportionately white military commanders, and Black and brown service members are disproportionately likely to be court-martialed for some offenses like fighting or theft. Those and other key reforms majority Democrats have been striving for in the bill—including finally repealing the 2002 Iraq War Authorization!—have been stripped out, largely thanks to the fact that the filibuster still exists in the Senate and what Gillibrand warned might happen: ”Our reform has the bipartisan support of 66 senators and 220 House members,” she said before the committees conferenced. “The only way it does not become law in the NDAA is if a handful of powerful men rip it out behind closed doors.” It didn’t get entirely ripped out. It got watered down so that just sex crimes and related crimes—kidnapping, manslaughter, and murder—would be referred to special prosecutors outside of the chain of command for decision-making on prosecutions. Gillibrand and her supporters wanted decisions about prosecuting all major crimes to be transferred outside of the military change of command. “The majority of our colleagues have recognized that our bill has the support of a bipartisan, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a majority in the House,” Gillibrand said. “But the will of those members was ignored in the NDAA, where committee leaders stripped out reforms from the bill behind closed doors, despite assurances that they would follow regular order.” Sen. Josh Hawley, an unlikely ally to a Democrat in any instance, is almost as angry as Gillibrand. He said the committee leaders “stripped the guts out of the sexual assault provisions,” adding: “It’s amazing that you can have the kind of support for a provision that Kirsten has worked to get so hard, with bipartisan support, and yet DoD, every time, succeeds in just gutting it.” It wasn’t just this that was stripped out, however. A bipartisan provision that would have required women register with select service for the draft was nixed. Russia sanctions were removed. Remarkably, the committee leadership stripped out “every provision their colleagues had included to limit U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia over human rights concerns, even a proposed ban on selling weapons to the Saudi government unit whose members killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” Gone is the Iraq War authorization repeal; when that war ended a decade ago the U.S. had ended the adjacent war in Afghanistan. They also removed authorization for a new office for the Pentagon to combat extremism in the ranks, and a “red flag” gun safety provision. The House passed it 363-to-70 on Tuesday, with 52 Democrats voting against it. Rep. Anthony Brown, a Maryland Democrat and House Armed Services Committee member, was one of them. “At a time when Democrats control the House, the Senate and the Executive Branch, it is an unconscionable failure to deliver a National Defense Authorization Act that does not meet the values of equity and justice for which we have long strived or a bill that does not meaningfully protect the foundations of our democracy,” Brown said. Moderate Reps. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who supported the provisions punishing Saudi Arabia, also opposed the bill. They, along with progressive Rep. Ro Khanna of California, issued a statement blasting “a small group of senators” whom they said “exercised a veto over these measures.” “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia will not be improved if every time its rulers defy U.S. concerns, we take it upon ourselves to sweep those concerns under the rug; the burden of maintaining this relationship must be more equally shared,” the three lawmakers said in a statement. The small group of senators is getting blasted all over the place. “Historically, the defense bill has not been a vehicle for progressive change. And I think that holds here,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat and the Senate Democrat’s chief deputy whip. “This is a function of the 50-50 Senate, and the filibuster existing.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren blasted the committee leadership for its “failure to include a robust response to sexual violence and to deal with extremism in the military,” and the bloated spending in it. “And I’m concerned about what got left in, and that is an additional $25 billion in defense spending that the White House didn’t even ask for,” Warren said in a brief interview. “I think both of those are wrong.” It’s once again a case of minority rule on much of the bill and particularly the criminal justice reforms. That and the ever-powerful defense contractors who succeeded in padding the bill beyond what even the Pentagon had requested. The bill will pass in the Senate, probably early next week.
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