ISF's Formal Letter to our MoC's expressing our disappointment over their support for a flawed NDAA.
At the end of last year, Congress passed a deeply flawed NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). This included large increases in overall military spending that appear to have broken the long-standing “parity” agreement requiring equal increases in domestic spending. Shortly after this, conflict in the Middle East escalated when Trump had Iran’s military leader Soleimani killed while in Iraq. Congress is complicit in failing to curb Trump’s dangerous escalations and continuing endless wars.
Senator Feinstein and Representative Speier voted “aye” for this extremely dangerous bill. Senator Harris did not cast a vote. Neither did Speaker Pelosi, as is regular for the Speaker - but she did nothing to quell the legislation.
ISF has sent a formal letter to our MoC’s expressing our disappointment over their role in this. Read it below, or download a PDF here.
To: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (name changed for other MoCs)
From: Indivisible SF
Date: January 21, 2020
Re: Deeply Disappointed at Democratic Support for a Flawed NDAA
We write you today to express our deep disappointment at the acceptance by Democratic representatives of the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which included large increases in overall military spending that appear to have broken the long-standing "parity" agreement requiring equal increases in domestic spending.
We are also gravely disappointed that Democrats agreed to trade away -- for little tangible gain -- so many important policy provisions that had been included in the House version of the NDAA. We lobbied and campaigned for those provisions both among your constituents here at home and through other Indivisible chapters elsewhere in the country. We trusted that you would fight for them and we feel you let us down.
Had the NDAA been passed with the "Prohibition of unauthorized military force in or against Iran" and the "Sense of Congress regarding the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force" language that was in the original House version, it might have restrained Trump's reckless and dangerous provocation of war – or at least made it easier for you in Congress to block him. Alternatively, had you not accepted such a deeply flawed NDAA and it was still unresolved and on the table, that might have given him pause. In our view there was no pressing need to rush through enactment of the 2020 NDAA in December and Democrats should have hung tough to win at least some significant concessions from Republicans who very much wanted the large increase in defense spending. And we note that Trump signed the NDAA on December 20 and assassinated Soleimani on January 3rd, less than two weeks later. We have to wonder if Trump played us all, holding off militarily striking against Iran until he got an NDAA that left him free to do so.
According to media reports, Democratic negotiators surrendered on so many crucial NDAA provisions out of a desire to focus attention on impeachment. Yet the main argument put forward for impeaching Trump was that he is a danger to national security. If that's the case, why surrender without fighting for the NDAA provisions that might have constrained him? To us, this looks like a continuation of the unfortunate but long-standing pattern of Republicans seizing and retaining power while Democrats content themselves with minor policy victories such as paid federal family leave – social programs that Republicans then gut and defund.
For three years we in Indivisible have been fighting for immigrant justice in opposition to Trump/Republican racism, white-nationalism & bigotry. So we have to criticize your abandonment of hard-fought-for provisions in the House bill that would have blocked their racist border wall and their anti-immigrant obsessions, including those that would have:
Prohibited his wall altogether
Limited his power to transfer to it funds allocated for other approved purposes
Blocked, restricted, and regulated detention of immigrants on military bases
Blocked the funding of family separation
Required that detention camps housing children meet government health, safety, and child-welfare standards.
We also feel you let us down when you allowed Republicans to remove provisions that:
Opposed Russia's sabotage of our elections
Required independent auditing of Pentagon finances
Prohibited Trump and his family businesses from personally profiting from military expenditures (emoluments)
Strengthened rules against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, and so on
And we do not understand why you dropped House-approved clauses that:
Opposed the 2001 "endless-war" AUMF that has been used to justify 41 military interventions in 19 different nations
Tried to limit deployment of “low yield” nuclear weapons that increase the danger of a nuclear war
Restricted the sale and delivery of weapons to Saudi Arabia for use against Yemen
Required the president to report armed conflicts involving U.S. military forces
Blocked funds for Trump's vain military-parade
Established protection for whistle blowers
Ended Republican prohibition against closing the illegal Guantanamo prison and transferring the prisoners to the U.S.
For a more detailed listing of specific provisions that we feel should have been more vigorously defended see “Some of the Provisions in the 2020 NDAA that Democrats Surrendered”.