Congress shouldn’t exempt women from the draft if they’re in combat

I ultimately voted today for the National Defense Authorization Act because it’s important we authorize this national spending necessity. Defense as a percentage of GDP has slipped from about 9 percent of gross domestic product when I was born in 1960 to roughly 3 percent today.

It had to come down from the big numbers we saw in the wake of World War II (when we were fighting for our very survival as a nation), but many experts argue our numbers are too low today. At a minimum, it’s important we authorize the spending we do have so that procurement, research, and a host of other long-term projects stay on track.

That’s the good news. The bad is that there were many wrongs tucked into this bill. It continued to use wartime contingency funds for recurring operations. It had tucked into its pages an earmark for New Balance shoes. One size never fits all, but this bill had an earmark that would eliminate a new recruit’s current ability to pick the shoe that works for him or her in basic training and instead replace it with a shoe picked by politicians in Washington.