Letter urges defense cuts in crisis

House’s progressive Democrats want focus on pandemic

WASHINGTON — Twenty-nine of the House’s most liberal Democratic members called Tuesday for the yearly national defense authorization bill to cut military spending — a declaration, they said, that is meant to focus federal resources on the coronavirus pandemic.

The demand, however, stands to greatly complicate the Democratic-controlled House’s ability to advance the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the most consequential must-pass bills that Congress assembles each year.

The signers are almost all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including lead authors Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who have long called for lower levels of Pentagon spending to free more resources for domestic spending. But the pandemic, they argue, presents a new imperative for defense cuts.

“Right now, the coronavirus is our greatest adversary,” said a draft of the letter circulated to House offices and obtained by The Washington Post. “We must remain focused on combating the coronavirus and not on increasing military spending that already outpaces the next 10 closest nations combined … At some point, spending more than every other nation on earth must be enough.”

The letter is addressed to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the panel’s top Republican, and it comes as the committee begins the annual process of assembling the defense bill and forwarding it to the House floor.

A Democratic committee spokeswoman said Smith “is aware of the caucus’s concerns regarding defense spending.”

“When working on the annual defense bill, each year the committee fields requests and concerns from many members across the ideological spectrum, and this year is no different,” said the spokeswoman, Monica Matoush. “All of these requests are taken seriously by the committee and will be addressed during the legislative process.”

The liberal demands come less than six months after the last National Defense Authorization Act passed after an unusually partisan and contentious process that saw several Democratic priorities championed by Congressional Progressive Caucus members dropped from the final bill.

Pocan said in an interview that the left wing of the Democratic caucus was likely now less willing to tolerate a higher level of Pentagon spending in return for policy sweeteners knowing they were likely to be bargained away in negotiations with Senate Republicans and the White House.

“Now we’ve been through that. We know that probably a promise like that is not going to happen again,” he said, arguing that the pandemic makes the liberal argument against rising defense spending more salient than ever.

“It’s the most valid contrast I think you could ever have to defend,” Pocan added. “What really defends our country right now is spending money with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], with state and local governments, for providing the testing, the personal protection equipment, for all the things that people know really protect their family, and I think it’s a good sharp contrast to make.”

With 29 signatures, the signers could together block the bill from passage if Republicans unite against Democrats, as they did last year.

Among the signers are the four members of the House’s hard-left “squad” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New New, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. But they also include senior House members such as Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts; Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio of Oregon; Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez of New York; and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva of Arizona. One, Rep. Ro Khanna of California is a member of the Armed Services Committee.

The letter also was offered at a time when there are eminent questions about how willing the hard left is willing to use its leverage inside the House to force the broader Democratic caucus in its direction.

Just last week, liberals fumed as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., kept favored Progressive Caucus priorities out of a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill. But only one member on the caucus’s left — Progressive Caucus co-chairwoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington — voted against it.