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October 26, 2015

Does Obama deserve credit for the NDAA veto?

The media, doing their normal work as stenographers for the establishment, will tell you…

President Obama vetoed the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in order to meet budgetary limits. In other words, the media will try to convince you Obama is being frugal.

The Republicans, on the other hand, want you to believe Obama’s veto endangers our troops during a time of war.

These are both comic book depictions of the truth.

We must reveal what the media hides.

The Republicans are trying to use a special war account (called Overseas Contingency Operations) as their slush fund. Why?

  • OCO is not counted under the budget law.
  • Republicans want to use OCO to sneak-in $38 billion in additional spending.

Obama’s veto is an even more clever trick, because the President is willing to spend just as much money on defense as the Republicans desire. But he wants more domestic spending, and he has no similar “off-the-books” gimmick. So he’s proposing a “bi-partisan” bargain. And here comes the real bad part…

The President wants both parties to agree to scrap the budget caps!

Say what you will about Budget Control Act of 2011 (a.k.a., the sequester). But the caps imposed by that law have reduced the size of the deficit. Spending would’ve been much higher, every single year.

Here’s the President’s reasoning: If GOP will give Obama what he wants (scrapping the budget caps) then both political parties get what they want — more spending on their preferred programs.

And the deficit explodes to even higher levels.

Please be clear about this…

Obama isn’t vetoing the bill to save money. He’s doing it as a tactic to force the Republicans to spend MORE money. And until the President gets what he wants, he will use his veto to thwart the Republican’s and their “outside the budget caps” scheme.

So where does that leave you?

You have to be the adult, and tell the children in Washington how to behave.

Please use Downsize DC’s “Cut Spending” campaign to send your directions to Congress. You can copy or edit the following for your personal comments…

Please know that I understand what’s going on with the NDAA situation.

President Obama has vetoed it in order to persuade the Republicans to spend more on domestic issues. In other words, he’d prefer to break the budget caps, entirely, and approve the extra defense spending after he gets an agreement for more domestic spending.

I do not consent to any of this. I want less spending, period.

I will be watching what you do with this issue.

–END OF SAMPLE LETTER-

Jim Babka & Perry Willis

Co-founders, Downsize DC

If your comment is off-topic for this post, please email us at feedback@downsizedc.org

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