House Appropriations bill: military equipment > people
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°32 | 4 August 2020
Situation
The House approved an appropriations bill on Friday that includes funding for all of the yearly spending bills (except for two, which aren’t expected to go to the floor) in a 217-197 vote.
1. Defense > social spending
Despite defense being only one of the accounts funded through the bill (in addition to labor, health and human services; education; commerce, justice and science; energy and water; financial services and general government; transportation; housing and urban development), it occupied more than half of the $1.3 trillion spending package ($694.6 billion).
2. Mostly corporate welfare
The F-35 is a fraudulent system. Trump requested 79 of them. House Democrats just provided funding to buy 91 ($9.3 billion). The Senate will likely support these additional purchases.
In exchange for budgeting for endless deployments (see below), Congress voted for a 3 percent pay raise for military personnel. Far as I can tell, a 3 percent pay raise amounts to (roughly) an additional $860 for junior enlisted troops and $1,500 or more for officers. Between 2018 and 2019, Lockheed Martin’s CEO salary jumped 44 percent ($9,383,387; to make Hewson’s total compensation in 2019 $30,900,000).
3. Funds endless war
In addition to the $68+ billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), the bill also provides funding for military operations in Afghanistan. Democrats could have at least defunded military operations in the country after Ilhan Omar’s amendment (below) for an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan was voted down. Instead, the appropriations bill funds these operations, including $3,047,612,000 for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund. A July 30 SIGAR report found that the US is unsure of how many Afghan security personnel actually exist.
Thanks for your time,
Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)