Ask Rep. Adam Smith and other House members to stand against military waste

To: The Honorable Adam Smith
From: Constituents of 9^th CD
Date:  May 16, 2014Dear Representative Smith,

As the ranking Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, you voted to approve the proposed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that the committee recently sent to the full House for consideration. But the NDAA contains wasteful spending on unnecessary, obsolete weapons systems and other unconscionable expenditures we cannot afford. We must return to a peacetime military budget and reinvest in our children’s future.

The US military has wasted trillions of dollars and killed hundreds of thousands of people in disastrous, mismanaged, corrupt wars — often in support of autocratic kleptocracies.We call upon you to co-sponsor the War Authorization Review and Determination Act (H.R. 4608), and to vote for Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment to the FY2015  NDAA—both of which would repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

For 12 years, the AUMF has been used to justify open-ended war and endless abuses of privacy and human rights.  Please help lead the effort to repeal the AUMF and restore Congressional constitutional decision-making authority over war and peace.

Likewise, we call upon you to work to eliminate the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) slush fund, which has been used to maintain military spending, without the accountability of budgeting.   The public debate about sequestration contained the talking point that the military had to face the same across-the-board cuts that domestic programs suffered; but many of the cuts were circumvented by funneling money through off-the-books OCO spending.

We look forward to engaging you on these and other issues in the future.

Sincerely,

Donald A. Smith, PCO 41^st LD, Progressive Democrats of America, and http://waliberals.org