Sunday, June 20, 2010
Defense Secretary Robert Gates drops a bombshell: President Obama could veto legislation lifting the ban on openly gay servicemembers.
Obama’s alleged veto — according to Gates, wouldn’t be based on his feelings about the viciously homophobic “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which Obama supports repealing but on the fact the repeal bill is tied to a military spending bill that might include projects Gates calls “wasteful.”
Watch it:
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This is precisely why I have argued (along with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) for the Congress to pass repeal legislation that President Obama can sign.
As long as repealing the ban is an defense add-on, there is the chance Obama could be pressured to veto it because the military is spending the country into bankruptcy.
This is as easy as, “clean up the bill and get it passed.” But somehow, someway, they will use it to stall further legislation towards repealing DADT. If I sound cynical it’s because…U.S. Government.
If DADT is repealed in Obama’s first term, I will be shocked. Maybe by Sept. of 2012 when there’s no political risk but not before then.
Obama is crafty as a politician, and it’s an election year. He’s also right about the veto. We need to cut waste as a national priority in both military and domestic sections of the budget pie. That’s one side of the tax/cost reality of debt reduction. Tax increases on the wealthy and large, profitable corporations.
They would move offshore (financially), and Americans would be a little closer to having a level playing field between both small vs. corporate spending, and the corporate wealth in influence and the people. Either that, or people will warm to a nationalization of offshore companies.
It won’t happen in the President’s first term; that’s for sure.
Any friggin’ excuse he can find to not repeal DADT.
If Obama doesn’t get DADT repealed, he will lose the support of the LGBT community and much of the left who believed him when he said both DADT and DOMA would be repealed in his first term. Obama’s reelection isn’t guaranteed. Not in the current political climate.
What do you want to bet, within six months of Rahm Emanuel’s departure, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed and in a year, no one will even remember what the controversy was all about?
All it akes to change this crap is a Presidential decree.Unfortunatly Obama is to much of a homophobe to sign it,so he shifts the blame to Congress.Of course what can you expect from a politician who wants to relegate same sex relations to the seperate but equal Civil Unions.