Defense budget, culture war, and Monster Energy

All with a price tag of $890 billion

We just passed a $890 billion defense bill out of the Armed Services Committee.

I’m a new member on the committee and it was my first time through this. 

Here’s how it went.

The bill - obviously - is huge. It’s under construction for months. Every subcommittee works on a different part, then we pick a day for all those parts to come together and we vote on the whole thing.

BUT: 

On the day that big vote happens, things become more complicated as hundreds of amendments get filed by members of the committee who have something specific they want in the bill.

This year, there were 800 extra amendments.

So we do this marathon day where - in addition to voting on the whole bill - we sort out all the amendments. This year we finished at 1 a.m. 

I learned three things.

First, a lot of this day is designed to fool you. Tons of these amendments were not good faith efforts to improve the bill - they were fake outrage amendments. Almost all of our time was spent on performative culture war stuff that took the place of actual scrutiny over the immense number of policy decisions that are in the bill.

My sense is that most of the members on this committee are very serious people. But this day - which is the one that’s guaranteed to have lots of reporters and cameras in the room - is not the day for serious people. For the most part, it’s the march of the phonies.

Second, on this day, the chair of the committee has a very specific job:

It’s to say no to his own party.

Why?

Because he knows that some of the amendments his party is proposing are absolute deal-breakers for the minority party and he wants a big bipartisan vote out of committee to give the bill the best chance when it reaches the whole House.

Honestly, he did a pretty good job of knocking away the real grenades that would have blown up the whole thing. He definitely knew what he was doing. He let in just enough of the culture war stuff to satisfy his party without going that step too far that could have sunk it.

But the grenade-throwers are about to get another chance because, now that it’s passed committee, it goes to the whole House where he can’t stop people from proposing super-inflammatory amendments.

So grenade-throwers could still blow things up - but my sense is that, as usual, that’s not what they really want.

What they really want is just some attention. Once they’ve gotten enough, things will proceed.

Third - because they knew it would be a long day - there was a sideroom in the back of the committee that had an assortment of snacks just for members. 

It also had a cooler with a bunch of Monster Energy drinks on ice. At first I thought that was an odd choice of beverage, but sure enough, some members of Congress started drinking those Monsters right when we started at 10am.

Looking back, I should’ve known that was a sign of the kind of “debate” we were about to have.

I’m not allowed to use pictures that are taken in committee rooms, so to give you a sense of the experience, I asked an artificial intelligence program to create an image of “a male politician in a committee room holding a can of Monster Energy” and here’s the glorious image it produced:

Now the bill heads to the House floor and if it passes it will have to be reconciled with the Senate version which will have major differences.

That’s the latest. Hope all is well.

Best,

Rep. Jeff Jackson (NC-14)