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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The House of Representatives won\u2019t get to vote on the latest proposal<\/a> to finally end<\/a> Selective Service.<\/p>\n Early Tuesday morning, after overnight behind-the-scenes discussions, the House Rules Committee<\/a> voted to propose a rule<\/a> for House floor consideration of this year\u2019s National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) that leaves the proposal<\/a> for attempted automatic<\/a> registration of young men for a possible military draft<\/a> in the version of the NDAA to be debated and voted on by the full House, and prevents any debate or vote on the \u201cautomatic\u201d registration proposal<\/a> or the alternate proposal<\/a> to end draft registration.<\/p>\n The House Rules Committee recommended \u201cmaking in order\u201d for House floor debate and vote almost 300 amendments<\/a> to the NDAA, but not<\/em> the bipartisan amendment<\/a> to replace the provision to try to automate<\/a> draft registration with a provision to repeal<\/a> the Military Selective Service Act, end draft registration, and abolish the Selective Service System<\/a>. (Scroll down here<\/a> for the list of amendments submitted to the Rules Committee and those made in order for floor debate and votes.) There was no public discussion by the Rules Committee of any of the proposals with respect to Selective Service.<\/p>\n The upshot of this avoidance of the issue of the draft by the Rules Committee is that the House will probably approve a version of this year\u2019s NDAA including automatic<\/a> draft registration, while the Senate version will make no major change to the Selective Service law. The issue will then be among the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill referred to a closed-door House-Senate conference committee to negotiate a package-deal set of compromises.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a good chance that, as happened in 2016<\/a>, 2021<\/a>, 2022<\/a>, and 2024<\/a>, the changes to Selective Service proposed by the House and\/or the Senate will be removed from the final compromise version of the bill by the conference committee. But there\u2019s no guarantee that will happen, and even if it does, that will only postpone the issue for Congress of how to deal with the ongoing failure<\/a> of draft registration and the likely failure of any attempt to activate a draft.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a stalemate on the draft, and an unwillingness in Congress to face the issue, for decades<\/a>. Draft registration has failed<\/a>, but neither Congress, the Pentagon, Presidents from either party, nor of course the staff of the Selective Service System<\/a> \u2014 whose jobs are on the line \u2014 have been willing to accept reality, admit failure, or acknowledge the policy implications<\/a> of removing the draft from the U.S. arsenal<\/a> of mechanisms to enable unlimited<\/a> \u201cforever\u201d wars around the world.<\/p>\n The proposal for automatic<\/a> draft registration is the last hope of Selective Service System staff to salvage their agency and their civil service sinecures from being abolished \u2014 perhaps on recommendation of the Department Of Government Efficiency<\/a> (DOGE) \u2014 as a failure and a waste of money. The proposal for automatic<\/a> draft registration is likely to be revived every year by friends of Selective Service and preparedness for a draft, unless and until Congress ends the Selective Service charade<\/a> and recognize that a draft isn\u2019t a feasible option, even as a \u201cfallback\u201d.<\/p>\n Opponents of conscription and war need to remain alert to the threat of an attempt to automate<\/a> draft registration (which might be left in this year\u2019s NDAA by the conference committee), and keep the pressure on Congress, regardless of what happens with this year\u2019s NDAA, to face the facts and repeal<\/a> Selective Service.<\/p>\n Edward Hasbrouck maintains the <\/em>Resisters.info<\/em><\/a> website and publishes the <\/em>\u201cResistance News\u201d newsletter<\/em><\/a>. He was <\/em>imprisoned in 1983-1984<\/em><\/a> for organizing resistance to draft registration.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The House of Representatives won\u2019t get to vote on the latest proposal to finally end Selective Service. Early Tuesday morning, after overnight behind-the-scenes discussions, the House Rules Committee voted to propose a rule for House floor consideration of this year\u2019s National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) that leaves the proposal for attempted automatic registration of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-55013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55019,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55013\/revisions\/55019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55013"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}