Senate Democrats block military funding for the

Posted: Nov 6, 2015

preventing appropriations from going forward. The Democrats did this for one simple reason: they want leverage to push their liberal priorities in all the other spending bills. In short, they are using military funding as a hostage. Just last week, the Senate passed the Bipartisan Budget Act, a budget deal that raised the legal spending caps for both defense and non-defense discretionary spending. This deal, which was opposed by many Republicans, gave President Obama and Democrats in Congress 100 percent of the funding level they want for non-defense agencies, will cutting defense by $5 billion. The Democrats argued, when they stopped this bill this summer, that they wouldn’t allow a defense bill to move forward until they got a budget deal that raised non-defense spending So, if there is a budget deal, why are Democrats holding the defense spending bill yet again? It’s all about political leverage. Even though Republicans have majorities in the House and the Senate, Senate Democrats are willing to put military funding at risk in order to ensure that they have leverage over the other funding bills...... The fact that Democrats would even consider blocking the VA spending bill is pretty amazing, but allowing it to move forward is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, this only highlights their crass political move on the military funding bill. In essence, Senate Democrats are saying that they won’t use veterans for political leverage, but it is ok to use future-veterans—men and women in uniform today—for leverage. dailysignal.com ;