A bipartisan group of Maine representatives joined together on Thursday to kill a “Defend the Guard” bill from Rep. Benjamin Hymes (R-Waldo) that would have protected National Guardsmen from foreign combat deployments unless Congress formally declared war.
[RELATED: Maine Legislature Debates Bipartisan Defend the Guard Bill to Prevent Casualties in Undeclared Wars…]
“I think really the biggest challenge to defending the Guard in Maine is people not really understanding the way the Constitution is written, and when we’re supposed to go to war, and who’s supposed to have the authority to do that,” said Rep. Hymes speaking to The Maine Wire.
“It’s been kind of muddied over the last 24 or 25 years on who’s supposed to be doing that, and I think that if people read the Defend the Guard bill and really understood what exactly it is doing, that they would get a lot more support for that,” he added.
Hymes’ bill, LD 265, initially drew bipartisan support from co-sponsors from both parties, but was sent out of its last work session in the Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs with a divided report, and the committee voted 10-3 against its passage at the beginning of the month.
Hymes’ bill was one of multiple Defend the Guard bills being considered across the country and aimed to protect state national guards from foreign combat deployments unless Congress first performs its Constitutionally mandated duty and formally declares war.
Congress has not voted on a formal war declaration since World War II, despite the nation and the National Guard becoming embroiled in numerous foreign wars since the 1940s. Growing opposition to the Vietnam War led to the War Powers Act of 1973, but both Gulf wars and the decades long engagement in Afghanistan were authorized indirectly, through spending bills.
On Thursday, the Maine House held a roll call vote on the bill, resulting in a massive 109-33 vote majority rejecting the bill and accepting the committee majority’s “ought not to pass” recommendation.
Interestingly, the vote was not split along party lines, with eight Democrats voting against the committee’s majority recommendation and 45 Republicans siding with the majority of Democrats against defending the guard.
Last year, the Maine GOP voted overwhelmingly to add Defend the Guard to the party’s official platform. The majority of legislative Republicans were willing to undermine their party’s platform rather than pass a bill that might prevent the foreign deployments of Maine Guardsmen.
[RELATED: Maine Republicans Add “Defend the Guard” to Official Platform…]
Two days after his bill died in the House, Hymes attended the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, hosted by the NH Free State Project, a libertarian movement headed by former Maine State Sen. Eric Brakey. Brakey was instrumental in enshrining Defend the Guard into the Maine GOP platform.
Hymes contributed to the Liberty Forum’s panel discussion on Defend the Guard, which included Sgt. Dan McKnight, founder of Bring Our Troops Home, a group dedicated to implementing Defend the Guard legislation across the country.
The panel focused on practical measures that can be used to encourage legislators to support Defend the Guard bills, such as testimony from combat veterans. Hymes pointed to his personal success in advocating for the policy while discussing his time as a combat veteran in the Navy.
He highlighted some of the largest difficulties that the bill faced. Opponents of Defend the Guard often claim that if the legislation is passed, the federal government would pull funding from Maine’s National Guard and assign it to a state without a similar policy.
According to the panel, opponents tend to focus on the fiscal and legal ramifications of the policy change, while proponents usually focus on the human cost and avoidable loss of life that result from national guard deployments in undeclared foreign wars.
The panel members agreed that rank-and-file troops and lower-ranking officers tend to support Defend the Guard, while generals and administrators oppose the policies.
Hymes noted the staunch opposition from Maine National Guard Adjutant General Diane Dunn, who refused to even acknowledge that Maine Guardsmen had died in foreign wars, something the previous Adjutant General openly admitted.
“The current [adjutant general] was just, ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ ‘that didn’t happen,’ kind of completely going away from the fact that the National Guard did deploy, and they did that, that’s like an honorable thing that an [adjutant general] should at least recognize,” said Hymes.
Following the panel, The Maine Wire briefly interviewed Hymes. Asked for more details on his efforts to pass Defend the Guard and how he would defend against claims that it would cause the Maine National Guard to lose funding, Hymes said:
“I have reached out Congress and to Senate and to the Pentagon, and I’ve also called out both the adjutant general, both the current and previous to give me some kind of proof that this would even happen, and I have not received any evidence that we would actually be losing any kind of funding.”
“Until that happens, I will continue to push for Defend the Guard because no answer is a no answer to me, and I would like someone to give me an answer on what exactly is going to happen as opposed to just conjecture on what could potentially happen,” Hymes added.
The best insurance to keep them home is “DONT VOTE DEMOCRAT”
My roomate’s mom-in-regulation makes usd eighty one each hour at the laptop . She has been fired for eight months but remaining month her paycheck turned into usd 17367 just operating on the pc for a few hours…..
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What part of “National Guard” are we missing here?
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