On Wednesday, Congress approved the final conference report of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) despite no legislator having read the bill.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to social media to expose the insanity of how the 2020 NDAA was egregiously shoved down the throats of our elected representatives.
We just voted to pass the final conference report version of the NDAA, which was scheduled last night at 10pm.
The report is 3,488 pages long! The table of contents itself is 49 pages long.
Without enough time to actually read this report & for other reasons, I voted no.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 11, 2019
Campaign for Liberty (C4L) sent out an action alert informing the public about the horrors of the legislation, which does nothing to roll back unconstitutional measures like indefinite detention and the torture of U.S. citizens.
“At a time when the federal deficit is rapidly approaching $1 trillion, the NDAA makes no attempt to cut our bloated military budget,” wrote Norm Singleton, who is the President of C4L.
“Instead it authorizes spending over $700 billion on unnecessary and unconstitutional military interventions around the world,” Singleton added.
C4L noted that the 2020 NDAA comes in the days following the release of the Afghanistan papers, which definitely showed that deep state bureaucrats have systemically lied about progress in Afghanistan to dupe the American public into supporting forever wars in the Middle East.
“Congress is trying to increase the “defense” budget even on the heels of an explosive exposé published this week about the waste in the Afghanistan war and how U.S. officials at all levels routinely lied to the media and the American people about the progress — even when they knew the war was unwinnable,” Singleton wrote.
“It has been estimated that over 2 TRILLION dollars has been spent in Afghanistan since 2001, and approximately 2,400 American troops have lost their lives,” he added. “And Congress wants to give out even more money for forays around the world that have nothing to do with the defense of our country.”
In addition to liberty-minded Republicans, anti-war progressives also have united to oppose the 2020 NDAA.
“Unaccounted for is Trump’s misuse of defense funds to further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border. The question of whether defense funds should be used as a political tool to persecute asylum seekers and whip up support from the president’s base has been put off to another day,” wrote the progressive anti-war coalition that includes CodePink, Peace Action, the American Friends Service Committee, and dozens of other organizations.
“Today’s NDAA is far from our vision for a just, peaceful, and democratic foreign policy. Its failures not only underscore how critical it is that we continue building progressive grassroots movements for a better foreign policy — it calls into question the defense authorization process altogether,” they added.
While President Trump may complain about undue influence of the swamp and the military-industrial complex, he does very little in actuality to curtail their power. He is expected to sign the 2020 NDAA once it is placed on his desk.
