(Washington, D.C.) – Representative Charlie Dent (PA-15), Chairman of the House Appropriations Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, released the following statement regarding President Obama’s veto of the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA, which has been passed for 53 consecutive years, authorizes troop pay and sets the annual priorities and budget levels for the Department of Defense.
“I’m extremely disappointed by President Obama’s decision to veto the National Defense Authorization bill. Using our servicemembers as ammunition in a political fight is wrong.
Our men and women in uniform should not have to pay the penalty for the President’s political brinksmanship. The NDAA is an important bill that has long enjoyed bipartisan support – something that unfortunately is becoming too rare in Washington.
This bill provided the President with the full amount of his requested funding for the military. It met the needs of our service branches to maintain a robust defense posture and confront the ever-increasing threats we face around the world.
Instead of granting our men and women in uniform a 1.3% pay raise and providing them with financial security by establishing a new 401(k)-style retirement system for the 83% of service members with less than 20 years to build up a nest egg, the President’s veto will embolden our enemies and send a morale-deflating message to our troops actively engaged in war that their welfare and safety are less important than further expanding domestic spending and federal bureaucracies.
President Obama has made a regrettable decision with this veto. It is my hope that both the House and Senate will vote to overturn his veto and salvage this well-constructed bill.”
23 comments:
Hey Charlie, now , Sir, show your voters, how much you care about our men and women in uniform.
Never do we hear Congress takes a pay cut or any other govt agency takes a real cut to balance the books. Instead, they play the base line budgeting game. Are you going to stand up to obama for your voters and the Troops Mr. Dents , or will you go on MSNBC and rail against the other members of the GOP . Some how Charlie, you will find a way to blame the GOP for this.
For a guy , like obama , who claims he appreciates the military, it is quite obvious, he does not , when he pulls this garbage. There isn't much more of the military to hollow out. Troop levels are shrinking to sizes not seen in almost 100 years or more.
The world is on fire and obama wants to keep hollowing out the military any way he can. Lets pump the cash into global warming or transgenders use of bathrooms and why they pick the bathroom they do.I cant make it up.
Here is what the tax payers have been funding over the last year instead of our Troops and their families..One study called “Why Lesbians Are Fat” has a budget of $2.97 million. The money goes to the National Institutes of Health. Or maybe this waste ...The federal government reportedly has spent more than $3.9 million to get monkeys drunk in order to study the effect the alcohol has on body tissue.
Maybe if the obama family would have cut back on their vacations, , not all, but a few, this would never have been an issue. When one family spend 1.95 billion on play time , while our troops suffer, something is very wrong here.
Just with the very few examples cited above, the obama admin could have freed up 2 billion dollars....if you look hard enough , we could find another 50 billion with out having to dig too much deeper than than the National Inst of Health. Does this org serve a purpose? Yes. Do they waste billions ? Yes. Look up what your tax dollars are being used to "study".
How about cut the cash flow to countries that despise the USA? How about looking in another fraudulent organization run by the state dept called USAID. Look it up. We give countries like Mexico , Guatemala, Ecuador, and Honduras hundreds of billions to prop up their economies over the last 30 years and to keep their people from sneaking into America , and these countries pocket the cash and send their most needy to the USA, illegally.
Charlie Dent said, "Instead of granting our men and women in uniform a 1.3% pay raise and providing them with financial security by establishing a new 401(k)-style retirement system for the 83% of service members with less than 20 years to build up a nest egg, the President’s veto will embolden our enemies and send a morale-deflating message to our troops actively engaged in war that their welfare and safety are less important than further expanding domestic spending and federal bureaucracies".
Cant wait to see how obama and the socialists/democrats justify this .
It isnt only the dems/socialists who own this issue. The GOP owns it as well.
Govt is too big and bloated and out of control.
It should be noted that the bill the president vetoed includes a measure that allows $38b to be added to defense spending without it being subject to the spending cap. This circumvention of the spending caps that apply to everything else has only been in place since 2013, and allows Republicans to take credit for funding the troops while blaming spending in excess of the caps on Democrats. It also makes it harder to close the prison at Guantanamo. There is no way the military isn't going to get funded. It's a matter of how.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/opinion/mr-obama-is-right-to-veto-defense-bill.html
7:19, Maybe for a person as unhinged as yourself it may seem like USAID and the NIH are useless, but USAID helps to stabilize countries economically to prevent the sort of political-economic collapse that is happening in Iraq and has happened in Zimbabwe and a number of other developing countries in the past few decades. That keeps people in those countries safe, and keeps you safe. The NIH studies what causes diseases and how to treat them. That seems pretty important to me, but maybe you wouldn't mind living in a hospital.
USAID and the NIH do some amazing things, but both agencies have had and continue to have high rates of fraud, waste and other issues that are unbecoming.
USAID has issues partly because in many developing countries it is difficult to tell how foreign governments are going to handle aid money, which unfortunately is not something we can know until the money is distributed in most cases, but the alternative of not dispersing aid is unacceptable. I am not sure what you are referring to in terms of fraud and waste in the NIH, but NIH grants are how a lot of researchers in biology-related fields get funding, and the amount of funding available has dropped precipitously in recent years, partially because regular people don't tend to understand how science works, and they get mad at the government for paying for it. Take the famous "shrimp on a treadmill" experiment, which I believe was funded by an NSF grant, and sponsored outrage on right wing talkshows. The experiment wasn't just to see how fast shrimp can run, it was to see how their metabolisms respond to anoxic and hypercapnic water conditions, which are becoming increasingly common in coastal ecosystems due to climate change and pollution, and may have profound economic effects on coastal fisheries. It was a very important study, and well worth the money spent on it.
*sparked outrage, sorry
We stabilize third world hell holes with a strong military allowed to take off the gloves. I spend time away from my family only to have my compensation used as a political football. There are many elected officials who claim to support the troops but their actions say otherwise. Maybe that's why the left hates us so much, we promote strength and military dominance in a political climate that seeks to cultivate defeat and weakness. The left manufactures problems and then attempts to ride herd on solutions. I see many Gladstone flags on bumpers in the base parking lot. It's likely another reason the left despises us. I will pray for an overwhelming veto over ride but will likely see the vote mirror strict party affiliation.
Damn autocorrect. I meant Gadstone flags, you know, the "don't tread on me" yellow flags that the elitists call "tea bagger" flags.
Wow a 401-k for veterans. Charlie you do really hate our boys
This is a political stunt hand written for GOP members. Do your job and don't try and divide the public by deciding who you think is deserving and who isn't. If so, why not reinstate the draft and make all of us part of the issue.
Teabaggers are mostly chicken hawks who play the military card for votes. They believe in all wars they don't have to fight. They believe in all veteran benefits they don't have to pay for.
Just do your job and pass a real budget fro the entire nation and don't play politics.
Christ Charles, you are better than this.
Now Charlie. The President made it perfectly clear he would veto the bill (only his fifth veto, the least since James Monroe) IF Congress added restraints to closing Guantanamo Bay. You did it anyway. The President said he'd veto the bill if you tried to undo your own sequestration measures on defense and not in other areas. You ignored him.
Now, with your House in disarray, the President ONCE AGAIN, has the upper hand in negotiations. Well done.
For a guy , like obama , who claims he appreciates the military, it is quite obvious, he does not , when he pulls this garbage.
The Congress passed the sequestration cuts, genius. Remember, lower spending, lower taxes, thats the mantra of your tea party GOP.
So Obama now wants to defund the military.Why does this surprise anyone.
9:37 - Not very bright, are you?
No I am not.However I do see Obama is defunding our military .A broken clock is correct twice a day
If you honestly believe there is any chance that the military will be defunded, please learn something about how politics works in Congress. This is a cheap ploy by Republicans who passed a bill they knew the president would veto, so that they could win political points among their base and military families. If they thought there was any real chance that a veto would cut off troop pay, they would have passed a better bill. 9:37 and 8:19 (thanks for your service by the way), GOP congressmen are betting on you not being able to tell the difference between a stunt and a real appropriations bill. Are you going to prove them right or wrong?
5:01 am
"Teabaggers are mostly chicken hawks who play the military card for votes.
Why do you always make a gay reference when you get upset and angry? Why all the hate?
It sounds a lot like the democrats/socialists catering to teachers unions and other unions for the same thing.
You need some help and others who know you, understand that to be very true. Have a nice day.
This Obama stunt was so terribly thought out the news services won't report on it.It is getting very difficult to defend Obama on this move
I gave up caring what Obama does years ago.
According to Redd, non-Democrats are a bigger threat to this country than terrorists.
So, why should I care if the military gets defunded? The only enemies we have are domestic ones and we have the National Guard to handle domestic situations. So, we just don't need a military anymore. It's too expensive, anyway.
What we need is more spending on domestic social programs.
Stop being pussies and let Obama move the Gitmo detainees into federal prisons. Then the NDAA gets signed.
As for the Chicken Hawk comment, isn't it interesting that most of the combat veterans in the federal government are Democrats?
Teabaggers are for the most part Republicans. Saw in the news noted teabagger Dennis Hastert was hit up on his old wrestling coach moves with the boys. Teabagger Chicken Hawks from Dickless Cheney on down.
Are you guys aware that the United States spends more on Defense (War,actually) than the next 10 countries combined? Two of those countries are Russia and China. How, exactly is that gutting defense? Gitmo is expensive to keep and use. Build a new GITMO on American soil.
As far as vacation time goes, as of August 8, 2015, the same number of days in office for both George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama. Bush had taken 407 vacation days, while Obama had taken 125. These figures come from Fact Check.org/ Sort of debunks your while myth there.
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