Defense Spend Keeps Bipartisanship Alive

Big saving grace in passed $858B Defense Policy Bill is it gets overdue pay raises to GIs & shows bipartisanship not dead, if on life support. Now watch Parties wrangle over expected omnibus budget’s deficit blow out …

Do wonders never cease? As the WSJ noted, the defense bill expected to be signed by Pres. Biden not only authorizes the purchase of sorely needed new weapons to fight the world’s increasingly bellicose bullies, but it “increases pay for service members and ends the Pentagon’s [controversial] Covid-19 vaccine mandate.” But perhaps most striking was that the lawmakers voted overwhelmingly (83-11) to so increase America’s total national security budget by about 10%.

True, national defense spending is often one area in which Dems & Reps more often agree on. Yet, the more radical or ideological senators as well as Congressmen had made noises about holding this year’s military spend hostage to other matters on their agendas as the deadline for avoiding a year-end government shutdown approached. Not so this time, since just 60 Senators needed to vote “aye” to get passage this time around. Even Illinois Dem Machine Senator Richard “Dick” Durbin, one of the more progressive pols on Capitol Hill, said what? That the vote show “members of both sides of the aisle are committed to a strong national defense and to the protection of our women and men in uniform”?

Davd Soul