President Biden’s Military Blockade He threatens to veto a defense bill over culture wars, not real wars
By now you’ve seen headlines that the House GOP is descending into dysfunction, but a rump of Republicans aren’t the only intransigents in Washington. The White House is firing off veto threats about a GOP military spending bill, which is rich considering how the Biden crowd claims to be focused on deterring China.
The White House on Monday issued a veto threat for the House Republican Pentagon spending bill, which is moving through the lower chamber this week. As part of the debt-ceiling deal, the GOP agreed to cap defense at Mr. Biden’s $886 billion request, even as many Republicans think the military needs more to deal with proliferating world problems.
The Biden Administration now says it “strongly opposes” the GOP bill because Republicans dared to exert Congress’s prerogatives. The bill blocks funding for a Pentagon policy that offers leave and transportation expenses for service members traveling to get an abortion. That unilateral Biden policy is not, as the White House claims, “in full accordance with the law,” and it has served mainly as an accelerant to America’s cultural wars.
The White House also objects to provisions on climate change. But the House is controlled by Republicans, so Mr. Biden will have to deign to negotiate with a co-equal branch.
The House bill isn’t perfect. The White House rightly objects that the bill doesn’t fund bulk buys of the Standard Missile-6 and an air-to-air missile. House appropriators are skeptical that contractors can deliver and think the block buys don’t save enough money.
But deeper stocks of excellent missiles are the best purchases America can make to raise the costs of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Buying parts in bulk now could help the U.S. surge production in a crisis. The Biden Administration could iron out these disagreements in an eventual House-Senate conference without a public veto showdown.
The budget debate in Washington is increasingly detached from world reality. China is amassing “the largest military buildup since World War II,” as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific command has said. Mr. Biden’s Air Force Secretary said this week that the U.S. “must be ready for a kind of war we have no modern experience with.”
He’s right, and the public needs to hear that message. But Americans won’t believe it if they see the Biden White House subordinating that priority to a fight over elective abortion or other cultural cudgels.
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