Tangle - Biden signs the NDAA

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

On December 27, President Biden signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2022 into law. The bill, which authorized $768.2 billion of spending in 2022, passed the House and Senate with overwhelming majorities (88-11 in the Senate, 363-70 in the House), with Republicans outnumbering Democrats in support in both chambers despite being in the minority. Each year, the NDAA is considered a "must-pass" bill, as it is one of the only pieces of annual legislation that never seems to fail. It has become law every year for six consecutive decades.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, the bill that determines our military defense spending budget every year. It's a pretty interesting bill and there's a lot going on and a lot of interesting debate happening. But

before we jump into it, as always, we'll start out with some quick hits. First up, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump as part of an investigation into the Trump organization. Number two, Representative Bobby Bush, the Democrat from Illinois, became the 24th House Democrat to announce that he was retiring this cycle. he was retiring this cycle. Number three, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four of 11 fraud charges in a case related to her purported revolutionary blood testing system. Number four, setting a global record, the U.S. topped 1 million new COVID-19 cases in just 24 hours as the Omicron variant continues to spread. Number five, after a crash involving six tractor trailers on the snow-covered I-95 interstate south of Washington, D.C., hundreds of drivers have been stuck in both directions of the highway for as many as 15 hours.

All right, so that's it for our quick hits, which brings us to today's topic, the NDAA. On December 27th, President Biden signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2022 into law. The bill authorizes $768.2 billion of spending in 2022, and it passed the House and Senate with overwhelming majorities. It passed 88 to 11 in the Senate and 363 to 70 in the House. Republicans outnumbered Democrats in support in both chambers, despite being in the minority. Each year, the NDAA is considered a must-pass bill, as it is one of the only pieces of annual legislation that never seems to fail. It has now become law every year for six consecutive decades. passed bill as it is one of the only pieces of annual legislation that never seems to fail. It has now become law every year for six consecutive decades. After hitting some speed bumps with negotiations over China and Russia policy,

the 2022 NDAA authorized a 5% increase in military spending in $25 billion more than Biden initially requested. It includes a 2.7% pay increase for troops and civilian employees. $740 billion will go directly to the Pentagon. Here are some of the major line items in the bill. $28 billion will go toward nuclear weapons programs. A change in the military justice system that removes authority from military commanders to prosecute sex offenders, system that removes authority from military commanders to prosecute sex offenders. Instead, tasking independent military lawyers with investigating sexual assault cases was included. It also makes sexual harassment a crime in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There's the establishment of a 16-member multi-year independent Afghanistan War Commission to investigate what happened during and at the end of the war. It prohibits the transfer

of any Defense Department funds to the Taliban. $7.1 billion is going to beef up the U.S. position against China and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, including a statement of congressional support for the defense of Taiwan. It directs the Department of Defense to put together reports on China's new technologies, security developments, and military capabilities. It authorizes $4 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative to dissuade Russia from aggression, including $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. It creates a new intelligence division dedicated to tracking unidentified flying objects that breach sensitive U.S. airspace,

and it continues to prohibit the use of military funds to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. or foreign prisons unless certain conditions are met. This is something the Biden administration actually opposed because it has been hoping to close the prison down. Almost as important as what's in the bill is what isn't in the bill. Congress removed an amendment that would have required women ages 18 to 25 to register for the Selective Service or future drafts alongside men. A repeal of a two decades old war resolution that allowed the U.S. military invasion of Iraq was also not included despite passing the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees earlier this year, as well

as having support from the White House. The 2002 Iraq resolution was cited as recently as 2020 by President Trump as legal justification for the strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The bill did not go as far as some Democratic senators wanted in reforming the military justice system. Military commanders still retained the power to convene courts and create a pool of potential jurors in sexual assault cases and also retained authority over prosecuting other serious crimes like murders and kidnapping. Legislation to require companies from critical infrastructure industries like water, agriculture, or financial services to report hacking and cyber incidents to the federal government was also not included. The language was stymied by divisions over whether to include a wider range of companies in the reporting requirement.

Below, we're going to take a look at some reactions from the right and the left, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right has generally been supportive of the bill, arguing that it's necessary to counter China and Russia. Some say the legislation didn't go far enough to address the rising inflationary pressures. Others have criticized Congress for not reclaiming and clarifying its war powers. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the press is focusing on cultural issues like tweaks to the military's justice system and the defeated proposal to draft women. But the bigger story is that Congress delivered a bipartisan rebuke to the utterly unrealistic

defense budget the Biden administration released earlier this year. President Biden in May proposed $715 billion for the Department of Defense in 2022. That was a 1.6% increase from 2021, an inflation-adjusted cut to America's national security in a world of growing threats. The $740 billion NDAA passed by the House and likely headed to the President's desk authorizes a 5.2% increase. The NDAA followed the White House proposal on military pay, authorizing a 2.7% increase for soldiers, sailors, airmen, and other Pentagon employees. That means much of Congress's $25 billion plus up goes to more and better weaponry, especially for the Navy. The House bill authorizes 13 new ships, up from the Biden's budget request for eight. That includes three destroyers compared to one

sought by the Pentagon. The bill also invests $330 million in U.S. submarine building capacity in the hopes of accelerating production to three attack subs per year. The 2022 authorization at least reflects a growing bipartisan acknowledgement of geopolitical reality, the board said. China and Russia are threatening shooting wars against their U.S.-aligned neighbors, and Iran is accelerating its bid for nuclear weapons as international institutions flail and weaken. In the National Review, John Rosamondo said the inflationary pressures are putting military readiness at risk. President Biden's overspending put his own administration's defense budgetary target out of

whack because its $715 billion defense budget increased only 2.2% from the year before. The current declared inflation rate stands at 6.8%, he wrote. The current NDAA is built around a 3% inflation hike. If the current inflation trend continues, Congress would need to more than double its $25 billion increase in a final appropriations deal to approximately $50 billion to keep the Pentagon's buying power from eroding. Building ships, tanks, planes, drones, and the like requires purchasing raw materials, the prices of which increase along with the cost of living for civilian employees and military service personnel, he added. The last two millennia have proven that overspending and inflation undermine military readiness. China and Russia are nipping at our heels and relishing the incompetence of our leaders on

matters including monetary policy, spending, and the lack of technological leadership and coherent military strategy. Meanwhile, Daniel DePetris said Congress blew another chance to reform its war powers, despite passing a 2,165-page bill with a number of national security priorities. What it doesn't include, however, is any semblance of interest on Capitol Hill about addressing the war power's elephant in the room, even though a growing number of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate realized the absurdity of keeping outdated war power resolutions on the books, he wrote. Why did negotiators leave out the provision repealing the 2002 AUMF from the Compromise Defense Bill? To argue that such a provision would be too controversial doesn't pass the last test. The House passed repeal last June on a strong bipartisan vote, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invents its own version in August. It's not like President Biden is lukewarm to it either. The White House is on

record supporting the resolution's demise. Some lawmakers, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, continue to make the case that the 2002 AUMF gives the U.S. legal cover for counterterrorism operations in Iraq. But this is a total misunderstanding of what this authorization does and doesn't allow, and suggests some of the most senior lawmakers haven't even bothered to read the law, DiPietro said. Rather, the issue is that Congress as an institution appears to be completely incapable of mustering the courage to take the hard votes the American people expect them to take. All right, so that's it for what the right is saying. This is what the left is saying. The left has criticized the amount of spending, noting that it's far more than many provisions in Build Back Better. Even if you believe in increased military spending, some

criticize where that money is going. Many point to Republican hypocrisy on concerns about federal spending. In Politico, Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Lindsey Koskaren said the bill is actually proof we can afford Biden's Build Back Better agenda. Congress is choosing to spend more on guarding the world's oil supply, at least $81 billion a year, than on the Build Back Better proposal for fighting climate change, which is $55 billion a year, they said. Congress is spending more on a single military contractor, Lockheed Martin, $75 billion last year, than on the Build Back Better proposal for preschool and childcare, $40 billion a year.

for preschool and child care, $40 billion a year. And finally, Congress is choosing to spend twice as much on military bases in Germany, $7.5 billion last year, than on the Build Back Better proposal for hearing benefits for seniors, $3.5 billion a year. The Build Back Better Act would reduce poverty and bring economic security to millions of children and workers, they said. It would make child care affordable, create good jobs, and invest in they said. It would make child care affordable, create good jobs, and invest in clean energy. And it would raise revenue through taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Sky-high military spending, on the other hand, helps perpetuate a foreign policy that brought us 20 years of disastrous war, while subsidizing military contractor CEOs and polluting the planet, all at a tremendous taxpayer expense. The Bloomberg

editorial board said a bigger defense budget is nothing to celebrate. As a budgeting exercise, the NDAA underscores Congress's inability to set clear priorities. Rather than free up resources to modernize the military's capabilities, the legislation extends the lifespans of weapon systems the Pentagon says it no longer needs. By failing to impose greater fiscal discipline, Congress risks weakening the U.S.'s ability to respond to future threats. On its face, the higher price tag, a 5% increase over last year, isn't objectionable at a time when the U.S. faces challenges from adversaries such as China and Russia. Yet rather than offset the new spending with savings from other programs, such as the $30

billion the U.S. had planned to spend in 2022 on the war in Afghanistan, Congress simply added to the Pentagon's top line. While a spendthrift approach to defense spending is nothing new, an unwillingness to consider even modest limits makes little sense. The latest bill even indulges the full list of unfunded requirements submitted by individual service branches and combatant commands, an annual wish list of additional weapons programs left out for the budget submitted by the department's civilian leaders. In the Washington Post, Paul Waldman said the contrast with how we treated the far less costly bills Democrats have recently advocated, particularly the infrastructure law and the Build Back better bill could not be more stark we spent endless tv hours and newspaper column inches debating the precise size of those bills and

how they would be paid for he wrote is 3.5 trillion dollars too much how about 1.9 trillion would 1.7 trillion work should we increase taxes on the rich to fund them and if not where do we get the money nobody ever asked where do we get the money when it comes to a defense bill. And that $768 billion, it's a single year's figure, unlike the 10-year totals that are used to describe infrastructure and BBB. If the defense budget were to rise 4% a year, about what it has over the past couple of decades, 10 years from now we'd spend $1.1 trillion a year. The 10-year total starting with this budget would be $9.2 trillion. All right, so that is it for the right and the left take. That brings us to my take. So about a year ago, when I was managing Tangle with my full-time job as an editor and regularly

working 14 or 15 hour days, I started doing something I'd never really done before, paying someone at the laundromat to wash and fold my laundry. It costs like $40 every time I did it, coming out to somewhere around $80 a month. Then and now, the idea of spending nearly $1,000 on laundry a year seems absurd to me. But when I didn't have to go back and forth to the laundromat, wait for an open washer or dryer or fold all my laundry, I saved literal hours each time I did this, not to mention being able to work for hours under erupted without having to get up and go walk a few blocks, swap my laundry from the washer to the dryer, and so on. Eventually, I quit my regular job to do Tangle full-time,

which freed me up hours every day. But I haven't quit the wash and fold. It's too convenient, became part of my budget, and now it's just baked into my lifestyle. The experience strikes me as an innocuous version of the absurdity that has become our military spending. There are plenty of noble bipartisan reasons to call for a cut to military spending. Many fit into catchy gotcha questions like why do we fund bombs and warplanes when we can't properly fund education?

While the left still has an anti-war reputation and there was more Democratic opposition to this bill than Republican, and there was more Democratic opposition to this bill than Republican, plenty of populist right-wing cohorts, including sometimes the current leader of the Republican Party, have rallied around anti-war calls over the last decade. On the other hand, plenty of Democrats still regularly and blindly sign off on more military spending each year, including apparently President Joe Biden. Not that we needed it, but the NDAA is a good reminder that Congress is not shy about spending, no matter who you look at.

What Congress wants to spend on is always the primary question. Conservatives have long made the case that the government's primary responsibility is protecting its citizens, and thus the military budget is a must-pass piece of legislation every year. There's a fascinating discussion there. What are the government's primary responsibilities, and is military defense number one? But I'm not sure you even have to answer it to understand the challenges we're facing now. The best reason to reduce our military spending is that the Pentagon is extremely wasteful. An internal Pentagon study found that it could save $125 billion over five years, and that report was issued in 2015. Then the Pentagon tried to bury it. At the time,

the study found the Pentagon was spending about a quarter of its $580 billion budget, which again is now $740 billion, on accounting, human resources, logistics, and property management, not necessarily defense. The next best reason is that even if you believe Russia and China are existential threats, the two combined are still spending less than half of what we spend on the military. That's because the vast majority of our spending is on preparing for operations we think might take place and maintaining hundreds of bases in dozens of countries. Unlike the debates we watch

play out on immigration, healthcare, infrastructure, or climate change, our politicians and punditry rarely engage in a debate about whether this is worth it for more than a 24-hour news cycle. It's great to see some reforms in the military justice system, some focus on the Pacific region around China, and an investigation into the failed Afghanistan war. These are all things I support. Like the Petras, I was dismayed to see another failed attempt by Congress to reclaim its war powers, which continues the trend of power consolidation in the executive branch. But most disappointing is another year where we continue to add tens of billions of dollars to a budget rife with fraud and waste, yet have little public debate about what that money is going toward or whether it's still necessary.

All right, that's it for my take on today's main topic, which brings us to our reader question. This one is from Min in Hadley Massachusetts she asked do we know how many people want a gun but can't get one and how has that number changed over time so Min kind of probably the best measurement for this is the number of people the FBI processes for gun background checks each year on average that number has been about 8.6 million in recent years On average, that number has been about 8.6 million in recent years. Over the last year or two, though, the FBI says the number has surged. In 2020, it was 12.7 million.

However, those numbers are convoluted and not really representative for a number of reasons. First, they don't include 20 states that process some or all background checks themselves. There were a total of 39.3 million federal and state background checks in 2020, which is a lot more than 12.7 million. But each one of those checks is not necessarily a gun purchase. They include anyone who applies for a gun permit, not necessarily someone who has bought a gun. For instance, I know of at least two friends in the last year who applied for a permit, got it, and then opted not to actually buy a firearm. The FBI and states also run background checks when checking on the status of a gun holder or run a single background check for someone purchasing multiple guns. All of these facts kind of make the numbers quite murky.

Still though, that gives us a good idea of how many people want a gun, somewhere in the range of, you know, $39-40 million, maybe less than that depending on how many people are buying multiple guns or how many people are applying for the permit and never actually going to buy a gun, maybe more than that. It's sort of hard to say, but let's just peg it at $39 million. In 2020, about 300,000 people failed the background checks. 42% of those failures were because the person applying was a felon. While 300,000 is a large number, it comes out to a failure rate of just 0.8%. That's actually smaller than the 3.4% of background checks the FBI fails to complete, which can lead to someone buying a gun despite not formally passing

the background check at all. Overall, both the number of background check applications and the FBI fails to complete, which can lead to someone buying a gun despite not formally passing the background check at all. Overall, both the number of background check applications and the failure rate have gone up over the last five years. Honestly, this is kind of a hard question to answer. This, to me, seems like the best data to draw out an answer. But on the whole, I mean, even some people who want guns, they never have to go through a background check because they might just get a hand-me-down or they live in a really rural place where they can just, you know, take possession of their dad's rifle or whatever. I mean, it's just kind of hard to say how many people want, desire a weapon and can't get one, but we do know basically how many people

are applying for gun background checks and failing. All right, quick reminder before we move on, if you ever want to ask a question to get answered in the podcast or the newsletter, you can write to me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com, or you can go to the newsletter and fill out a form we have linked to in there to submit a question. All right, that brings us to our story that matters, and this is a biggie. More than 450,000 students have been thrust back into remote learning as the Omicron variant upended a return to school in many major cities. Coming out of the holiday break, school districts in Newark, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Cleveland moved temporarily to remote learning. School closures, even for a week or two, can upend the lives of

parents, especially those who struggle to find or afford child care. While many politicians continue to pledge that schools will remain open, there is a growing fear among educators and students that a wave of new closures is just around the corner. The New York Times has a great story about this issue today. It's linked to in newsletter. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. 464,500 is the number of full-time contractors working for the Defense Department. 98.9 million is the amount of money the defense industry spent lobbying Congress this year. 750 is the number of bases or installations the U.S. has globally. 80 is the number of countries or installations the U.S. has globally. 80 is the number of countries where those bases or installations are located. $17.5 billion is the amount of money Congress allocated for the Space Force next year. All right, and last but never least is our

have a nice day section. In Norwich, Vermont, a general store is now being run by customers in order to keep it afloat. Dan and Witt's general store was on the verge of closure, but when word spread that the store's owner, Dan Frazier, was about to shut things down, his customers stepped up to help. Now a doctor can be found working at the register, a psychology professor might be sweeping up to help. Now a doctor can be found working at the register, a psychology professor might be sweeping up the floor. The fact the community stepped up, sometimes it takes sort of a crisis, if you will, to appreciate what you have, Frazier said. So far, the plan is working

out and the store is remaining open. CBS News has an awesome story about this. It's linked to in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. I'm here reporting from upstate New York where it's about 15 degrees outside. So I hope you're all staying warm. I cannot wait to head south and west and get some warm weather soon. Tangles on the road this week, like I said, so you'll be hearing me from all different spaces over the next month or so. Hope you guys are staying warm and doing okay, and we will be back in your feed tomorrow. Don't forget, punch that five-star button,

spread the word, subscribe, support the podcast, do all that good stuff. See you tomorrow. create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. you