Rep. Meijer votes for $778 Billion US Military Budget, which was passed with overwhelming Bipartisan support

Last week, 3rd Congressional Representative, Peter Meijer, voted to for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022, which passed the House by a vote of 363-70. 

The 2022 US Military Budget is $778 billion, which is $25 billion more than what the Biden Administration originally asked for. Now the Senate needs to approve the 2022 US Military Budget, which seems to be but a foregone conclusion.

This makes the 2022 US Military Budget larger than the one in President Trump’s last year, despite the fact that the Biden Administration has formally ended the 20 year US military occupation of Afghanistan. The US Military occupation of Afghanistan cost billions over the past 20 years, which has been part of the larger so-called US War on Terror, which has cost US taxpayers $21 Trillion since September 11, 2001.

Rep. Peter Meijer released the following statement on his vote in favor of the massive US Military Budget:

“For sixty years, the NDAA has received strong bipartisan support, and I’m pleased that tradition continued this year. I was glad to vote in favor of this bill to fully equip our service members and give them a pay increase, enhance military readiness, and generally provide for a strong national defense. This summer’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrated how critically important it is that we strengthen our military and give our men and women in uniform every tool and resource they need to defend our nation and keep us safe. After months of debate and compromise, I was happy to see the House and Senate come to a bipartisan agreement that prioritizes our military and does not include any poison pills, including any ‘red-flag’ provisions. Last night’s passage signals to our adversaries that the U.S. remains ready and equipped to respond to threats at home and abroad. I was proud to support this bill, I hope the Senate does their part to pass it quickly.”

Rep. Meijer claims that the US withdrawn from Afghanistan was botched, yet he says nothing about the disastrous twenty year US occupation of that country, the thousands of Afghani deaths, the several thousand US military personnel that died, nor all the other disastrous consequences of that occupation.

However, Rep. Peter Meijer does accurately use the term bi-partisan support for the 2022 US military budget, and he rightfully acknowledges that this bi-partisan support has existed for sixty years. My own read of the bi-partisan nature of US Militarism and US Imperialism is that it has last longer than 60 years. In fact, one could argue that there has fundamentally been bipartisan support for US militarism throughout the entire history of the United States of America. 

This bipartisan support of US Militarism over the past 60 years has translated into the following:

• Bipartisan support for US Wars of Aggression in places like Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq & Afghanistan.
• Bipartisan support for US military aid to other wars/repression by other countries, specifically illegal wars/acts of aggression, based on United Nations rulings, such as Israel, Egypt, Indonesia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, just to name a few.
• Bipartisan support for weapons sales to dozens of countries, with a recent example being Saudi Arabia.
• Bipartisan support for massive taxpayer subsidies to US military contractors, who manufacture the weapons used by the US Military and many other countries because of US weapons sales. According to the National Priorities Project, US Military Contractors have made $3.4 Trillion over the past 10 years.
• Bipartisan support for continuing to spend Trillions on militarism instead of funding housing, health care, education, or investing in the fight against the Climate Crisis. 

This Bipartisan support for US militarism is addressed in a recent article by the Feminist and Anti-war group Code Pink, which writes:

Let’s make no mistake about this: Congress’s choice to keep investing in a massive, ineffective and absurdly expensive war machine has nothing to do with “national security” as most people understand it, or “defense” as the dictionary defines it.

U.S. society does face critical threats to our security, including the climate crisis, systemic racism, erosion of voting rights, gun violence, grave inequalities and the corporate hijacking of political power. But one problem we fortunately do not have is the threat of attack or invasion by a rampant global aggressor or, in fact, by any other country at all.

Maintaining a war machine that outspends the 12 or 13 next largest militaries in the world combined actually makes us less safe, as each new administration inherits the delusion that the United States’ overwhelmingly destructive military power can, and therefore should, be used to confront any perceived challenge to U.S. interests anywhere in the world—even when there is clearly no military solution and when many of the underlying problems were caused by past misapplications of U.S. military power in the first place.

I wholeheartedly reject and oppose Rep. Peter Meijer’s vote to keep funding US Militarism, but he is correct when he says that this effort has been Bipartisan for decades.