Explaining the bill

Day 1,189, 18:18 • Published in USA USA • by ligtreb

I've seen a lot of misconceptions in our media and forums about the recent bill Congress passed regarding the military.

Because of my long tenure in Congress (16 terms) and being a military member for even longer than I've been in Congress, I felt like it was my duty to explain this bill to people and reassure everyone. I would never agree with any bill that "destroys the military" as others have claimed this does.

This bill will not affect anyone in the military outside of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This is not a political take over of the military, or Congress forcing itself on the military as I've seen mentioned elsewhere. The day-to-day activities of the military will be the same. They still get to name their own leaders and run themselves as they see fit.

Neither the Executive or Congress is able to choose their own CJCS or JCS member.

I've seen some worried that the JCS will now be political appointments. The JCS still picks their own Chairman and JCS members. The only differences now are that the President can remove a CJCS and that with a 2/3 vote, Congress can remove a JCS member.

I know the Congress part scares a lot of you, but let me say this: I'd be extremely surprised if this ever happened. We also have the power the remove a President with a 2/3 vote, and we haven't impeached a President in almost two years.

Term limits

The only term-limit established in this bill is for the Chairman, and he/she can't serve more than two-consecutive three-month terms. The JCS and JCS advisors are not term-limited and can serve forever.

While I didn't agree with this, I see the logic behind it and it was not a big enough reason to vote "No" on this bill. It's good to get new people at the head of every office sometimes.

I've seen the argument of "Congress doesn't have term-limits, why should the CJCS?" This is apples and oranges. The CJCS is the head of his branch, congressmen are not unless they are the Speaker, and no Speaker during my time here has served more than two months consecutively.

Checks and balances

The main reason this bill passed is to create a system of accountability. Congress gives most of its budget to the military (and most of the remainder goes to MPPs or reserves that help the military). Prior to this bill, the military did not have to tell us how the money was being spent or answer any of our questions, so getting information from the JCS was often like pulling teeth. Obviously, there are often national security concerns, but even when I or others asked questions that had nothing to do with national security, we couldn't get any information. Basically, we were just handing them over money with no accountability.

I trust that our military leaders always work for our benefit, but I wasn't comfortable with an arrangement that wouldn't let us be sure. Trust, but verify. The JCS has always been welcome in Congressional forums and IRC.

Under this bill, the military does not have to tell all of Congress everything. But one Congressman (the Speaker) will have access. The Speaker is almost always a highly-trusted member of Congress, and if they're not, the JCS has every right to tell us they don't trust him and help us elect a new Speaker.

Commander-in-Chief

The part of this bill that was most overdue is that the President gets the final decision on orders. I wrote about this almost a year ago and still hold most of the same viewpoints today, so I won't go into too much detail here.

Basically, we elect the President to be in charge of Foreign Policy and War. The President is the one with access to all the buttons to do those things. There have been times over the past year where the JCS has wanted to pursue a different foreign policy than our President, and that has hurt our foreign policy overall. The JCS should definitely advise the President on what he should do, and ideally, the CJCS and President would always agree. But when they don't, the guy we elect and can impeach should have the final call.

Thank you for reading

I'm proud of my long-time military service, especially when I was an officer for the National Guard and Marines in my past. I would never do anything to hurt the military and hope I made it clear here why this bill does not harm the military.