President Obama listed three reasons for his veto of the NDAA. The first one was that it keeps our armed forces from being able to plan properly. The second is that it does not allow the military to modernize and be more efficient. The third is that it keeps Guantanamo Bay open. The NDAA would have increased military appropriations funding by $38 billion.
The veto threat further argued against retaining the sequester budget caps, stating, “Compared to the president’s budget, the cuts would result in tens of thousands of the nation’s most vulnerable children losing access to Head Start, more than two million fewer workers receiving job training and employment services, and thousands fewer scientific and medical research awards and grants, adversely impacting the pace of discovery and innovation, along with other impacts that would hurt the economy, the middle class, and Americans working hard to reach the middle class.”
Critics have accused Obama of playing politics with the Defense Department budget.
“The president has shown his real priority — at a time when [Syrian President Bahsir] Assad is meeting with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, when we are struggling against ISIS, when China is building islands, he is going to veto a defense authorization bill to get an extra pound of flesh for non-defense spending,” Justin Johnson, senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, told TheBlaze.
Other presidents who vetoed the NDAA were Presidents Jimmy Carter in 1978, Ronald Reagan in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2008. In each case, the rationale for the veto was based on defense spending rather than a “fix” on non-defense spending.
The Obama administration asked for a $38 billion increase in defense spending from sequestration levels and a $37 billion increase for non-defense spending. Congress approved the $38 billion for defense increases, though the White House contends that’s a “funding gimmick.”
The $612 billion bill would have kept Guantanamo Bay prison open, which past defense authorization bills that the president signed also did.
“He has expressed the same concerns since he has been president, and he has never vetoed the NDAA before,” Johnson told TheBlaze. “I don’t see that as the real reason for the veto. The real issue is domestic spending.”
The NDAA has been met with strong responses from both sides. The idea that the President will not sign the NDAA unless Congress agrees to remove the spending caps on non-defense spending is completely ridiculous, especially considering that the non-defense spending budget has no relation to the NDAA. Is it right to hold the security of the nation hostage to fund a political agenda? No, it isn’t.
Source: theblaze.com
