A political declaration from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, aimed at achieving global gender equality by 2030, “lacks ambition,” according to nearly 1,000 women’s rights and feminist organizations from around the world.
In the document, which was formally adopted on Monday, world governments pledge to: bolster implementation of laws related to gender equality; bolster institutions vital to women’s empowerment; transform discriminatory norms and stereotypes; close resource gaps; boost accountability; and enhance capacities and data to track progress.
“The overwhelming lack of political commitment and financial resources, plain old sexism and misogyny, along with increasing religious fundamentalisms have affected the quality of the agreements produced by governments within the UN and at other levels.” —Lydia Alpízar, Association for Women’s Rights in Development
But a coalition of groups working to advance the human rights of women and girls say the declaration is milquetoast and must be strengthened.
“The text of the political declaration is weak and does not go far enough towards the transformative change that is needed for gender equality,” said Lydia Alpízar, executive director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, in a speech Monday. “We, women of the world in all our diversity, deserve much better than this. We deserve that you put aside your ideological, political and religious differences and fully recognize and affirm the human rights of women and girls and gender justice. Nothing less.”
A joint statement issued by 974 groups blasts the UN declaration as “a bland reaffirmation of existing commitments” that “threatens a major step backward” in the realm of women’s rights. The organizations also decry the lack of transparency around the crafting of the declaration, which they claim is the result of “several months of closed-door negotiations” from which women’s groups were largely excluded.
“[M]any of the gains that women and girls have made are under threat and women and girls worldwide face extraordinary and unprecedented challenges, including economic inequality, climate change and ocean acidification, and rising, violent fundamentalisms,” reads the statement. “At a time when urgent action is needed to fully realize gender equality, the human rights and empowerment of women and girls, we need renewed commitment, a heightened level of ambition, real resources, and accountability.”
Specifically, the groups are calling for stronger language that:
The attempt of governments to marginalize the role of these groups is an affront to women, everywhere.
including detailed measures to reform and strengthen public institutions to address the structural causes of gender inequality; ensuring an enabling economic environment for women’s rights and gender equality beyond sector-specific financing and gender-responsive budgeting; and more.
The Political Declaration must reaffirm the links between the human rights of women and girls and development, particularly as women and girls disproportionately are affected by the consequences of under-development.
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Even Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who heads UN Women—the standing body that oversees the Commission on the Status of Women—acknowledged portions of the critique even as she championed the goals of the declaration.
“Yes, much has been done, and much of it worthwhile. However, what we chose to prioritize and act on has not led to irreversible and deep-rooted change,” she said in her opening speech to the Commission.
Her remarks echo the findings of a UN Women report (pdf), also issued Monday, which declares that 20 years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action—which stated that “women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace”—progress has been spotty to say the least.
“Twenty years on, it is a hard truth that many of the same barriers and constraints that were recognized by the Beijing signatories are still in force globally,” Mlambo-Ngcuka wrote in the report’s introduction. “Change has not been deep enough, nor comprehensive, and it is not irreversible.”
Alpízar, of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, was more scathing in her assessment:
“[T]oday we must acknowledge that progress achieved has been very limited,” she said before the Commission. “The overwhelming lack of political commitment and financial resources, plain old sexism and misogyny, along with increasing religious fundamentalisms have affected the quality of the agreements produced by governments within the UN and at other levels.”
She concluded: “This is the moment; there are important opportunities before us. This is the moment when we must have all resources needed—the political commitment and the action—to achieve real transformations.”
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Two matches have been announced for next week’s episode of NXT UK.
Ilja Dragunov & Pete Dunne will take on WALTER & Alexander Wolfe in a tag team match on NXT UK next Thursday (October 15). The Heritage Cup tournament will also continue on the episode as Dave Mastiff and Joseph Conners face off in a first round match.
Dragunov & Dunne vs. WALTER & Wolfe comes in advance of Dragunov challenging for WALTER’s NXT UK Championship on the Thursday, October 29 episode of NXT UK. Dragunov saved Dunne from WALTER and Wolfe at the end of last week’s NXT UK episode. Dunne had been the special guest referee for Noam Dar and Wolfe’s first round match in the Heritage Cup tournament. Wolfe blamed Dunne for his loss and went to attack him after, but Dunne fought him off. WALTER then came down and helped Wolfe until Dragunov made the save.
Dar and A-Kid have advanced in the Heritage Cup tournament and will face each other in the semifinals. The winner of Mastiff vs. Conners will face the winner of Trent Seven vs. Kenny Williams in the semifinals.
Heritage Cup matches have the following rules:
There will be six rounds for Heritage Cup matches. Each round will be three minutes.
There will be 20-second breaks between each round.
All matches are two-out-of-three falls.
Falls can be won by pinfall, submission, or countout.
Once a fall occurs, the round ends.
Once someone has won two falls, they are declared the winner and they advance in the tournament.
If there’s a disqualification or knockout, the match ends without the need for two falls.
If a match goes the full six rounds, whoever is ahead on falls wins.
The Heritage Cup will be defended as a championship under the same rules following the tournament.
Less than a month after the Federal Communications Commission passed a set of groundbreaking net neutrality protections, both sides of the fight for the internet’s future have thrown down their gauntlets.
Republicans are reintroducing previously abandoned legislation that could kill net neutrality protections before they take effect, in a maneuver which is unlikely to be successful, but will serve as, according to Politico‘s Tony Romm, a “new springboard for sustained political attacks on the White House.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Politico on Friday that the team of GOP lawmakers who have banded together to oppose net neutrality rules is “simply trying to figure out the facts” of the FCC’s decision to approve landmark open internet protections. That group is currently suggesting that the commission bowed to political pressure from President Barack Obama—a narrative that allows them to transform the fight against net neutrality into “the same sort of drawn-out controversy as Benghazi and Obamacare,” Romm writes.
In that vein, the committee on Tuesday held the first of five hearings on the FCC’s rules, which heard theories that chairman Tom Wheeler capitulated to the Obama administration’s demands when he moved away from cable-friendly legislation and voted to protect consumer interests instead.
However, the anti-net neutrality lobby is up against several formidable opponents, spanning Democrats in Congress, government watchdogs, and civil rights activists, all of whom campaigned for more than a year for Wheeler to accept the most progressive proposals for internet regulations.
Matt Wood, policy director for media reform group Free Press, confirmed the organization’s staunch support of net neutrality and criticized Republicans for their tactics on Tuesday, stating in a press release, “The phone and cable lobby and their allies in Congress need to stop spreading lies about the net neutrality rules.”
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“They’re not Obama’s secret plan to take over the Internet,” Wood continued. “They’re not turning Internet access into a rate-regulated public utility and they’re not online censorship. They simply rely on the vital legal principles in Title II, adopted and updated by Congress on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.”
Similarly, more than 40 racial justice and civil rights groups sent a letter (pdf) to congressional leaders Tuesday morning to state their support of the FCC and object to the latest attempts to kill net neutrality regulations.
“It is critical that the FCC have the legal authority to protect the online digital rights of communities that historically have been marginalized in our society,” the letter reads. “With such protections, our communities have been able to better participate in our democracy, tell our own stories, strive towards educational excellence and pursue economic success.”
The letter continues, “We respectfully request that you join the millions of digital equality champions and support the FCC’s historic decision, and reject any efforts to overturn and weaken the decision. You will be in good company, on the right side of public opinion.”
Any Republican legislation that manages to pass Congress is almost guaranteed to be vetoed when it reaches Obama’s desk, Romm continues.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told Politico, “The Republicans have a coordinated approach opposed to net neutrality, and they don’t like our president, so they’re trying to wrap that into it. I’d say the chances of actually successfully pursuing a legislative effort to overturn what the FCC has done, I just don’t think it’s credible. It’s just shouting into the wind.”
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Aid organizations and residents are warning of a mounting humanitarian disaster in Syria’s Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, where approximately 18,000 residents are caught between an ongoing offensive by ISIS militants and air bombardments from the Syrian government’s armed forces.
ISIS launched an attack on the camp on April 1 and was met with fierce fighting from the militia Aknaf Beit al-Madqis, which is described by the Electronic Intifada as “an anti-government militia in the camp aligned with the Palestinian faction Hamas.”
The Yarmouk-based human rights NGO Jafra Foundation for Relief and Youth Development reports that the onslaught on the camp was coordinated between ISIS and the Syrian al-Qaeda aligned Jabhat al-Nusra. According to the Jafra Foundation, numerous civilians volunteered to help defend the camp against the offensive.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain, reported over the weekend that the Syrian Air Force, led by President Bashar al-Assad, dropped bombs on Yarmouk.
Major media outlets have been unable to verify key information about the fighting, due to the lack of security and access. However, witnesses and organizations on the ground describe the situation as dire.
“There are no definitive numbers reported for those injured or deceased but as of now 15 people have been confirmed as deceased and around 60 people have been reported in critical condition,” said the Jafra Foundation over the weekend.
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All medical facilities in the camp have ceased their operations, according to the Jafra Foundation. In addition, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency warns that residents suffer dangerous shortages of food and water.
Yarmouk’s Syrian and Palestinian residents—including 3,500 children—have already endured siege, fighting, starvation, and lack of access to water and medical supplies as a result of the country’s ongoing conflict.
However, aid workers warn that the crisis is at its most acute point yet.
“The lives of civilians in Yarmouk have never been more profoundly threatened,” said UNRWA in a statement released Sunday. “Men, women and children—Syrians and Palestinians alike—are cowering in their battered homes in profound fear, desperate for security, food and water, deeply concerned by the grave perils that may yet come, as hostilities continue.”
UNRWA added, “It is virtually impossible for civilians to leave Yarmouk as any attempt to move in the open brings high risk.”
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Nearly 300 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Ukraine to act as ‘trainers’ for the county’s newly-formed National Guard as part of what is being called Operation Fearless Guardian.
The operation involving paratroopers will last for six months, according to a statement by the U.S. Army on Friday.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt tweeted the development:
Canada is also taking part in the operation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement Friday rebuking the troops’ arrival.
“The participation of instructors and specialists from a third country on the territory of Ukraine, where an unresolved intra-Ukrainian conflict remains, where problems persist in carrying out the Minsk agreement, is far from helping resolve the conflict. To the contrary, it enables destabilizing the situation,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated.
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The Kremlin isn’t alone in criticizing the operation, as the Ottawa Citizen reported this week:
And Columnist and author Eric Margolis wrote earlier this year that the sending of the purported trainers was part of “the march to folly in Ukraine”:
The UN Human Rights Office and the World Health Organization estimate that over 6,100 people have been killed and over 15,000 wounded in the conflict since April 2014.
The UN Human Rights Office warned in a press statement Friday of a worsening humanitarian situation for those in eastern Ukraine, adding that “civilians continue to suffer seriously.”
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Adding one more pillar beneath an increasingly solid progressive movement platform, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio unveiled on Tuesday a new “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality,” calling for universal pre-kindergarten, a higher minimum wage, paid family leave, and higher taxes on the wealthy.
The 13-point agenda has been presented as “the left’s answer to the Contract with America, which helped propel Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution of 1994,” according to Politico, which first reported on DeBlasio’s plan last week.
The planks of the newly launched platform are in line with a new report on the root causes of—and proposed fixes for—the current wealth gap, authored by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and also published Tuesday by the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank.
DeBlasio and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both spoke at an event earlier on Tuesday touting the release of the Stiglitz report, leading Bloomberg to dub the DeBlasio-Warren-Stiglitz trio “inequality avengers.”
Titled (pdf), the 115-page manifesto argues that “inequality is not inevitable,” and is in fact the result of rules and the regulatory frameworks—favored by corporations and put in place by elected officials—that form the backbone of the U.S. economy.
“Over the last 35 years, America’s policy choices have been grounded in false assumptions, and the result is a weakened economy in which most Americans struggle to achieve or maintain a middle-class lifestyle while a small percentage enjoy an increasingly large share of the nation’s wealth,” it reads.
Those choices, according to Stiglitz and his co-authors, have entrenched in the U.S.: “a tax system that raises insufficient revenue and encourages the pursuit of short-term gains over long-term investment; weak and unenforced regulation of corporations; a de facto public safety net for too-big-to-fail financial institutions; a dwindling support system for workers and families; and a reorientation of monetary and fiscal policy to promote wealth rather than full employment.”
In short, “The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s,” the report declares. In turn, “[t]he policies of today are ‘baking in’ the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.”
Writing at the Washington Post‘s Wonkblog, reporter Jim Tankersley described the plan as “seemingly designed to rally liberals, enrage free-market economists and push a certain presumptive presidential nominee to the left.”
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Indeed, the New York Times predicts that the report “will likely influence Mrs. Clinton’s agenda,” especially as she has, in the past, reached out to Stiglitz for economic advice.
An executive summary of the report is embedded below:
DeBlasio’s agenda and Stiglitz’s report are merely the latest in a growing body of work focused on building a new progressive platform. Earlier this year, the Congressional Progressive Caucus—which on Tuesday threw its weight behind the Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality—released , which aims to “level the playing field” for low- and middle-income Americans. And just last month, a coalition of progressive groups released its own agenda: .
As Katrina vanden Heuvel put it in an op-ed published Tuesday at the Washington Post:
The unveiling of DeBlasio’s progressive agenda comes on the same day that President Barack Obama spoke at a conference on poverty sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Thought. During an hour-long panel discussion, Obama expressed frustration with conservatives’ reluctance to make compromises for the benefit of the poor.
“Talk to any of my Republican friends,” Mr. Obama reportedly told several hundred people attending the poverty summit. “They will say they care about the poor. And I believe them. But when it comes to actually establishing budgets, making choices, prioritizing, that’s when it starts breaking down.”
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Two years since he met with a trio of journalists in a Hong Kong hotel room and explained for the first time why he leaked some of the NSA’s most closely-guarded secrets about its global surveillance empire, whistleblower Edward Snowden has penned an op-ed for the New York Times declaring relief that his decision was not in vain and championed those who have picked up the fight against the expansive practices of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies.
“As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.” —Edward SnowdenThough recognizing that he and the key journalists that assisted him—including Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald—put their own “privileged lives at risk” by bringing the documents to the world, Snowden said his initial worries that the world would respond with “indifference, or practiced cynicism” to the information they contained were fortunately not realized.
“Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong,” Snowden writes. “Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress. After a White House-appointed oversight board investigation found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety and criticized its disclosure has now ordered it terminated.”
Earlier this week, thanks to the firestorm created since the public first became aware of its existence, one of the most contested portions of the NSA’s domestic surveillance—the bulk collection of American’s phone records—was put to an end. But for Snowden, the impact and power of what he describes as an “informed public” has—like the NSA operations themselves—had truly global reach.
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“Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every [American] citizen,” Snowden writes, “but it is only the latest product of a change in global awareness. Since 2013, institutions across Europe have ruled similar laws and operations illegal and imposed new restrictions on future activities. The United Nations declared mass surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights. In Latin America, the efforts of citizens in Brazil led to the Marco Civil, an Internet Bill of Rights. Recognizing the critical role of informed citizens in correcting the excesses of government, the Council of Europe called for new laws to protect whistle-blowers.”
But even with that progress, he warns the need for much deeper reform remains. According to Snowden:
Despite his continued political asylum status in Russia, where he continues to speak and work on issues related to digital privacy and civil liberties, Snowden argues that the people of the world have made a collective declaration against the need for mass surveillance and the various tangled programs operated by the NSA, the UK’s GCHQ, and the other powerful agencies of the ‘Five Eyes’ nations and others.
“Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift,” he concludes. “We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.”
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MINSK — Friday marks two months of popular protests against the official results of the disputed presidential election in Belarus, but Alexander Lukashenko shows no sign of budging.
Every weekend, tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Minsk to demand his resignation, despite bursts of violence from riot police.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the lead opposition candidate in the August 9 election, is touring European capitals and is seen by many as the president-elect of Belarus.
The EU has levied sanctions against some backers of Lukashenko’s regime — albeit not against the top man himself. Other countries, from the U.K. to Lithuania have instituted their own measures against Belarus, which include a travel ban and asset freeze aimed at Lukashenko.
But Lukashenko is digging in. Backed by his military and police, and by neighboring Russia, he looks prepared to try to ride out the largest wave of protests since he took power in 1994.
Here’s five reasons why the wily authoritarian just might hang on.
1. The police and military remain loyal
There were some highly publicized cases of police and army officers throwing their uniforms into the trash in the early days of the protests, but the vast majority of the security services continue to back Lukashenko.
That’s despite efforts by opposition leaders and civil society activists to get them to switch sides. Some demonstrators have handed out flowers to riot police — which hasn’t prevent the police from arresting them and throwing the flowers away.
Tikhanovskaya last month urged law enforcement “to stop the violence and go over to the side of the Belarusian people … Otherwise you will not escape a fair trial and punishment.”
She also branded Lukashenko’s secretive presidential inauguration “a farce,” adding that his orders to security forces “are no longer legitimate and should not be carried out.”
However, those appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
Police continue to beat up and arrest protest-goers — although not with the same ruthlessness as immediately after the election. Almost all opposition leaders are either in jail or out of the country, leaving the ongoing protests largely leaderless.
2. He continues to control the domestic levers of power
The country’s judiciary and parliament are under Lukashenko’s strict control, unlike in some other post-Soviet states like Ukraine, Armenia and now Kyrgyzstan, where popular revolutions succeeded in shaking or overthrowing authoritarian leaders.
“In Belarus, Lukashenko is able to appoint any judge, even to the Constitutional Court. The whole system is subordinated to one person,” Stanislav Shushkevich, the first leader of Belarus after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, told POLITICO in a phone interview.
In neighboring Ukraine, during the mass protests of 2003-2004, the country’s Supreme Court retracted the results of the controversial second round of voting in the presidential elections.
During Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution, parliament voted to oust pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
In Belarus, however, Lukashenko and his entourage barred any opposition figures from entering the nation’s parliament in 2019 elections — which international observers considered unfair.
3. Most government officials are reluctant to switch sides
Mayors, MPs and civil servants are by large continuing to stick with the regime.
Diplomats have been the exception. In recent weeks, Belarusian ambassadors in Slovakia, Spain and Argentina have publicly voiced support for the anti-Lukashenko movement.
Around 30 other diplomats of lower ranks are reportedly going to be dismissed soon because of their disagreement with the official results of the election and the post-election violence, according to Pavel Latushko, the former ambassador to Poland and France, and now one of the leaders of the opposition.
4. Workers aren’t striking
The biggest blow to the opposition is that spontaneous workers’ strikes, which broke out in reaction to the brutality of the police in the immediate aftermath of the election, quickly fizzled out.
“The strikes didn’t have a foundation in the form of some organizational center that would allow planning and coordination, even at a single enterprise, let alone for the whole country,” said Dmitry Kruk, a senior researcher at the Belarusian Research and Outreach Center, a Minsk-based think tank.
Kruk, who is also among 50 core members of the opposition Coordination Council, which was created immediately after the August election to negotiate a transfer of power with Lukashenko, attributed that to the weakness of the independent trade unions.
Unions have long been under systematic pressure from the Lukashenko regime and haven’t been able to break free of government control.
“Since the spontaneous strikes did not produce a quick political effect, crushing them was no longer such a difficult task for the authorities,” Kruk said. “Many tools were used, from arrests of leaders of spontaneous striking committees to the exploitation of the fears of workers — threatening the loss of their jobs and salaries.”
Belarus’ big industrial plants — ranging from trucks to potash and refineries — provide crucial cash to keep the economy, and the regime, afloat. If they continue to produce, there’s less pressure on Lukashenko to quit.
5. The Kremlin has his back
Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t make much of a secret of his personal distaste for Lukashenko, but he has no interest in seeing a popular revolution overthrow a longtime authoritarian leader. That might give increasingly restive Russians ideas.
In August, Moscow deployed “a reserve” of security forces on the border with Belarus, aimed at supporting Lukashenko if the situation in the country “starts getting out of control,” Putin said.
One month later, Putin threw a financial lifeline to Minsk, promising a $1.5 billion loan to support the nation’s struggling state finances.
Russia even issued a warrant for Tikhanovskaya’s arrest.
Lukashenko has been regularly calling Putin, and made an obsequious visit to Moscow last month to ask for support.
Shushkevich believes that Russia keeps supporting Lukashenko because “Putin really wants to absorb Belarus and to return to [a new] Russian empire, at least to something that almost resembles USSR.”
Moscow’s backing means Lukashenko can shrug off EU sanctions, imposed against only 40 senior officials after weeks of fraught negotiations among member countries.
“Personal sanctions are not a powerful tool for influencing the Belarusian authorities. But, in reality, that is not their purpose. They only provide symbolic support to Belarusian society,” Kruk said.
Vice President Pence is in the process of selecting members for a White House task force investigating President Trump’s unproven claims that millions of cases of voter fraud cost him the popular vote in last year’s election.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer mentioned the development with little fanfare during Wednesday’s press conference.
“He’s announcing that Vice President Mike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PencePence posts, deletes photo of Trump campaign staff without face masks, not social distancing Pence threatens to deploy military if Pennsylvania governor doesn’t quell looting Pence on Floyd: ‘No tolerance for racism’ in US MORE will lead a task force on this,” Spicer said when asked about Trump’s accusations that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in 2016. The White House so far has not offered evidence that so many people filed illegal ballots.
“He named the task force, and the vice president is starting to gather names and individuals to be a part of it.”
Spicer did not elaborate about the potential membership of the task force or provide a timeline for its creation.
In the days after his inauguration, Trump took to Twitter to rehash his assertion that millions voted illegally in the presidential election. While Trump won the Electoral College and thus the presidency, Democrat Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE beat him in the popular vote.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed a $612 billion war spending bill, relying on a back-door slush fund to dodge the austerity cuts that are gutting domestic programs from education to health care.
The 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed 269 to 151, largely along party lines. The roll call can be viewed .
The budget circumvents cuts passed in 2011, known as “sequestration,” by shifting $89 billion into the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) Fund, which was first created in 2001 as an “emergency” fund for the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The OCO was supposed to temporary but has since become a permanent fixture that allows the military to sidestep cuts—and maintain seemingly limitless war spending.
Many Democrats voted against the bill—and President Barack Obama threatened to veto it—because of its reliance on the OCO to circumvent budget sequestration. “We will not let defense out from under the budget caps and keep everything else under it,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Thursday.
However, historically Democrats have also consistently pressed for historically high levels of military funding, and the total amount of $612 billion is, in fact, in line with what the Obama administration requested for the 2016 budget. Furthermore, Obama’s initial proposal had called for nearly $51 billion to be placed in the OCO.
Some Republicans signaled they believe military spending should be limitless. “Whatever our troops need to get the job done, they should get it, and the House has acted to provide just that,” said John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Analysts say this year’s budget fight brings a critical question to the fore when it comes to Pentagon funding: Is the OCO slush fund here to stay?
Lindsay Koshgarian, research director for National Priorities Project, told Common Dreams, “This seems to be a turning point, where either we will get in a pattern of accepting a defense slush fund as as we go forward with caps or we won’t. Will we see defense spending with no real limits in sight while we have limits on domestic spending for education and health care and infrastructure?”
In addition to high levels of military funding, the bill also includes a provision that would make it more difficult for the Obama administration to transfer prisoners from Guantánamo Bay and would present another roadblock to closing the infamous facility.
The Senate version, which passed the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, also relies on the OCO war chest to maintain high levels of funding. The legislation is next headed to the appropriations process, and it will be months until the fate of the NDAA is known.
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