UNZ: 23-08-2024,
The United States is one of the most politically polarized countries in the world. Because effective lawmaking requires bipartisanship, and members of Congress are, like their constituents, at their most ideologically divided point in a half-century, cooperation is in increasingly short supply. As a result — or, more precisely, nonresult — the U.S. Congress passes fewer bills every year.
There is, however, one consistent area of agreement on Capitol Hill: defense spending. Each year for the past six decades, the massive National Defense Authorization Act — Washington-speak for the federal defense spending bill — has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Defense appropriations are so sacrosanct that the press often describes the NDAA as “must-pass”; it is routine for Congress to add in hundreds of millions of dollars of extraneous spending that the Pentagon does not want or request.
In the U.S. Congress, even “antiwar” voices support the military. Then-Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was primarily predicated on his opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet even his GOP opponent Sen. John McCain didn’t care call out Obama on the fact that when he had six chances to vote on the Iraq War — he wasn’t in the Senate yet when it voted on the measure authorizing then-President George W. Bush to attack the government of Saddam Hussein — he voted to send the cash each time. Sen. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly voted to fund the military and send weapons for wars being waged by U.S.