All but six Democrats voted for the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act.
The six are Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
The dozens of Democrats that joined Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans voted to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the bill.
According to Truthout, the vote on the motion to proceed to the NDAA veto override came after Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and others denied McConnell unanimous consent last week to speedily advance the behemoth military spending bill, a tactic aimed at securing a clean vote on House-passed legislation that would deliver $2,000 payments to most Americans. But McConnell, joined by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), rejected demands for a vote on the direct payments once again on Wednesday, declaring that the checks would benefit “millionaires and billionaires” — a complaint that was both false and shamelessly hypocritical, given that the same Republicans had no issue with passing President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy in 2017.
“We’re in the middle of an unprecedented crisis in our country. We have a healthcare crisis. We have an unemployment crisis. We have a hunger crisis. We have a housing crisis. We have an addiction crisis. We have a moral crisis in this country. The United States government should be responding to the needs, to the desperation, of families in our country at this time,” said Sen. Ed Markey.
COMMENTS