WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday he vetoed the annual defense policy bill, following through threats veto a measure that has broad bipartisan support in Congress and potentially establishing the first invalidation vote of his presidency.
The bill claims 3% wage increases for US troops and authorizes more than $ 740 billion in military and construction programs.
The action came while Trump was in hiding in the White House, enraged by his electoral defeat and escalating his showdown with Republicans while pushing fraudulent conspiracy theories and trying to pressure them to back his efforts to overturn the results.
The House was set to return Monday, and the Senate Tuesday, to consider votes to override the president’s veto.
Long before issuing the veto, Trump offered a number of reasons for rejecting it. He has asked lawmakers to include limits on social media companies that he says are biased against him, and to remove language that allows the renaming of military bases like Fort Benning and Fort Hood that honor leaders. Confederates. Without going into details, he claimed that the biggest winner of the defense bill would be China.
In his veto message to the House, Trump cited those objections, stating that the measure “ does not include critical national security measures, includes provisions that do not respect our veterans and the history of our military, and contradicts the efforts of my Administration. to put America first. in our national security and foreign policy actions. It is a ‘gift’ to China and Russia. ”
He also wrote: “ Numerous provisions of the Act directly contradict the foreign policy of my Administration, in particular my efforts to bring our troops home.
Both the House and Senate passed the measure by margins large enough to override a president’s veto. Trump had vetoed eight bills previously, but those vetoes held up because supporters did not get the two-thirds of the votes needed in each house for the bill to become law without Trump’s signature.
Before the veto, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Said the bill would help deter Chinese aggression. Other Republican supporters of the measure, including Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second Senate leader, and Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, tweeted that the bill would counter. threats from countries. like China.
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that Trump’s statement that China was the biggest winner on the defense bill was false. Reed also pointed to the shifting explanations Trump had given for the veto.
“ President Trump clearly has not read the bill, nor does he understand its contents, ” Reed said. “ There are several bipartisan provisions here that get tougher on China than the Trump Administration has been. ”
The measure guides Pentagon policy and informs decisions about troop levels, new weapons systems and military readiness, military personnel policy, and other military objectives. Many programs can only go into effect if the bill passes, including military construction.
McConnell, in a rare break with Trump, had urged its passage despite Trump’s threat to veto it. McConnell said it was important that Congress continue its nearly six-decade streak of passing the defense policy bill.
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