Rep. Scholten, Senators Peters and Stabenow all vote to approve the largest military budget in US history

Within the past 24 hours, both the Senate and the House voted to approve the largest US Military budget in US history. 

The Senate vote was 87-13, with both Michigan Senators voting in favor of the $886 billion military budget. However, they didn’t just vote to approve the military budget, because Democrats and Republicans are always including other issues when proposed legislation these days. 

In the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), based on a story from Common Dreams: 

“The NDAA includes an extension of surveillance authority that the government has used—and heavily abused—to access the communications of activists, journalists, lawmakers, and others without a warrant. 

The four-month extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was tucked into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as proposals to reauthorize the spying authority drew backlash from civil liberties groups and some members of Congress. 

Given an opportunity to remove the extension from the NDAA on Wednesday, 65 senators—including 31 Democrats —voted to keep it in the military policy bill, which ultimately passed in an 87-13 vote. (Peters and Stabenow also voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act funding.) 

As the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and other advocacy groups noted in a letter to congressional leaders last month, the FBI has used Section 702 authority to “gain warrantless access to the communications of tens of thousands of protesters, racial justice activists, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, journalists, and members of the U.S. Congress.”

Michigan Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow both bragged about their votes in favor of the largest US military budget in history, primarily arguing it providing funding for military installations in Michigan. Of course, they fail to mentions that this does very little for most residents of Michigan, where so many do not make a living wage, have inadequate health care, and where the rent is too damn high.

In the US House of Representative, the vote was 310 in favor, 118 against and 6 members not voting. Of the Michigan members of the House, every one of them voted in favor of the $886 billion military budget, including the 3rd Congressional Representative Hillary Scholten. The only member of the Michigan House that did not vote for the massive US military budget was Rep. Tlaib, who was the only one with courage to question US militarism and US imperialism, like she has been recently with the unconditional support for Israel that has been coming from the Biden Administration.

In a statement on Scholten’s support for the $886 US military budget, she chose to highlight an increase in pay for US military personnel, along with the absurd notion that there are energy conservation projects in the US military. What Peters, Stabenow and Scholten selectively chose to omit in their justifications for the $886 billion US military Budget are the following:

• The US Military Budget makes up 56% of the total US federal budget, which means that the US prioritizes militarism over everything else.
• It means that the US spends more on militarism than most other countries around  the world according to the National Priorities Project.
• It means that US Militarism is valued more than providing food assistance to people, providing decent housing to Americans, forgiving student debt (which Biden promised in 2020, but then lied), and to make sure that we don’t have a single payer health care system. The fact is, in the US, it is never a question of funding, rather a question of priorities. By voting for the $886 billion US military budget, Peters, Stabenow and Scholten prioritize military spending over human needs like food, housing, health care, relieving studnets debt, etc. See the Institute for Policy Studies report entitled, The Warfare State: How Funding for Militarism Compromises Our Welfare.
• It means that those who voted for the $886 billion US military budget chose to provide massive subsidies/corporate welfare to the US weapons manufacturers.
• It means that the US does not prioritize the seriousness of Climate Change. The US military is one of the worst contributors to the current climate crisis, even worse than most countries on the planet. In addition, US militarism is in many instances about maintaining or gaining access to fossil fuel reserves around the planet, thus making the US military sort of the hired assassins for fossil fuel companies. See the report Climate Collateral: How Military Spending Accelerates Climate Breakdown.

Therefore, with Sen. Peters, Sen. Stabenow and Rep. Scholten voting for the $886 billion US military budget, they ultimately voted for US Imperialism, corporate welfare, accelerating the current climate crisis and prioritizing militarism over meeting the basic needs of people living in the US and Michigan.