Cluster Bomb Fight in the House

Deconstructed

The Intercept

News

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Friday afternoon, the House narrowly passed a defense bill full of Republican culture war priorities. Hopeful efforts earlier in the week to rein in U.S. foreign policy fizzled out by week’s end, including an amendment to block the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine and other countries. On this week’s Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, and The Intercept’s Deputy Editor Nausicaa Renner to discuss how a bipartisan bill to prevent the Biden administration from sending cluster bombs to Ukraine went from gaining momentum to being undermined by another bill introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Deconstructed, I'm Ryan Grimm, and how spent this week debating military and
0:08.5	foreign policy through amendments to what's known as the National Defense Authorization
0:12.8	Act.
0:13.8	That's an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon, and the process for passing
0:17.8	it, loses one of the few moments that rank and file lawmakers can actually influence
0:21.7	the legislative process in Congress, or at least theoretically they can.
0:25.8	The bill passed out of the Armed Services Committee nearly unanimously saving the
0:29.0	real fight for the Rules Committee and the House floor.
0:32.2	The way it works is that a lawmaker writes an amendment that is related to the military
0:35.8	somehow, and then the Rules Committee votes on whether it's in order.
0:39.5	If it's in order, it goes to the House floor where everybody votes on it, but there's
0:42.6	no pretense that there are really any rules in the Rules Committee other than that the
0:46.1	amendment has to have some connection to the Pentagon.
0:48.7	What else makes an amendment in order?
0:50.6	If the Rules Committee says it's in order, then it's in order.
0:53.4	If they say it's not, then it's not.
0:55.5	Now some 1,500 amendments were submitted, so there were some very late nights this week.
1:00.6	In fact, one of our guests called me after midnight earlier this week to let me know about
1:04.7	developments underway in that Rules Committee.
1:07.4	That guest is the sleep-deprived Eric Spurling, Executive Director of Just Foreign Policy,
1:12.7	who's been lobbying all week on the NDAA.
1:15.4	Eric, thanks for waking up from your nap to join us.
	...

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