With Obama in White House work has become more difficult on issues of WAR & PEACE

Orwellian_Ghost

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Thu Jul-16-09 09:55 PM
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With Obama in White House work has become more difficult on issues of WAR & PEACE

UFPJ UPDATE

Update on Congressional Work:

Sorry to be slow getting back. Here's our take on what's been achieved so far and some of the work ahead. Report is in two parts: 1/ FY 2009 Supplemental, and 2/ FY 2010 Defense budget,

2009 Supplemental:

When Bush left office Congress had only appropriated half of the annual budget to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So Obama submitted a request for $73 billion to pay for the rest of the year. Early reports indicated that with the exception of a handful of dissenters (Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and a few others) even Congressional progressives were prepared to go along with the White House.

Here is where the folks on this UFPJ list-serve and our allies in the peace movement (Peace Action, CODEPINK, Friends Committee on National Legislation, AFSC) made a big difference. Through calls, emails and meetings, we bolstered the progressives and to the surprise of almost everyone, there were 51 antiwar members, who voted against the Supplemental.

Then the Supplemental went to the Senate, where many items were attached. Along the way, the Administration tacked on some additional funding for the IMF. Therefore when the bill came out of Conference, House Republicans announced they would change their vote on the Supplemental to a "NO." This meant that Obama needed to get some additional votes from the 51 antiwar Dems. Here again folks on this list-serve and allied groups did a great job of bolstering their resistance-necessitating repeated delays in the vote.

But on this occasion, antiwar members of Congress had their first real taste of what happens, when someone from their own political party is in the White House.--- Massive arm-twisting and threats by Democratic Leadership, Rahm Emanuel and phone-calls from Obama himself. In the end 20 of the 51 caved. into pressure, enabling the administration to pass the Supplemental by a narrow margin 226-202. For roll-call: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-348

2010 Defense Budget

While the 2009 Supplemental was being debated, the Obama Administration was pushing ahead with its FY 2010 Defense Authorization Bill. This bill includes $550.4 billion for the Department of Defense and national security programs in the Department of Energy. It also contains $130 billion to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

More details on the bill at : http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h2647:

That bill has already passed the House on June 25 by a vote of 389-22 (1 present, 22 not voting) For roll call: http://www.opencongress.org/roll_call/show/5784

What happened to the antiwar Congressional Representatives? Most voted in favor of the Defense budget (including the $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but concentrated their efforts on an amendment introduced by Congr.Jim McGovern that called upon Secretary Gates to present an exit strategy for Afghanistan by the end of December 2009. This amendment was defeated by a vote of 138-278.
For roll call: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-453 . With some vigorous lobbying by peace organizations, more than half of the House Democrats voted in favor of the McGovern amendment.

Where things stand now: The Senate has not yet passed the Defense Authorizations Bill, but is likely to do so imminently.

As folks on this list know, budget resolutions need to go through several stages -first authorization (which the House has already done) and then Defense Appropriations, which the House may well take up as early as next week. In the early fall, there will need to be a reconciliation of the House and Senate budget bills, and then another vote. So there are several opportunities to make our views known.

Position of UFPJ:

UFPJ is strongly opposed to the FY 2010 Defense budget. We object to the continued funding of the Iraq War (and the high level of US troops that remain there) as well as the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones inside Pakistan. We see no justification for another $680 billion in military expenditures and regard this as a serious impediment to improvements on the domestic front.

While we are continuing to urge members of Congress to oppose this budget, we have joined with other peace organizations in advocating some useful first steps. These include support for the McGovern amendment, which would require the Obama administration to produce an "exit plan" for Afghanistan
and backing for a Senate amendment, which would strike $1.75 billion to build seven useless fighter jets from the defense budget already passed by the House. This is so wasteful that even the Air Force and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are opposed.to building more F-22s and President Obama threatens to veto the defense budget bill if the new F-22s are included.

Summary: What we've just learned in the past three months is that with Barack Obama in the White House, our Congressional work has become more difficult on issues of war and peace. However, it is also clear that our work is extremely important and that members of Congress remain subject to grassroots pressure.