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Trump Signs Defense Bill With Watered-Down ZTE Sanctions (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: President Donald Trump on Monday signed a $716 billion defense policy bill that weakened efforts to punish Chinese telecom giant ZTE for violating trade laws. The bill, named for ailing Arizona Sen. John McCain, prohibits the U.S. government and its contractors from buying certain telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from ZTE, Huawei and a handful of other Chinese communications companies. The ban covers components and services deemed "essential" or "critical" to any government system. Some lawmakers had hoped to use the bill to reinstate tough penalties against ZTE, but the compromise bill removed a provision that would undo a deal the Commerce Department struck in June for ZTE to pay a $1 billion penalty to resume business with U.S. suppliers. But lawmakers agreed to abandon that effort in late July. Huawei called the inclusion of its products in the bill "ineffective, misguided and unconstitutional." They added: "It does nothing to identify real security risks or improve supply chain security, and will only serve to stifle innovation while increasing internet costs for U.S. consumers and businesses. We believe that the American people deserve equal access to the best possible connections and smart device options, and will keep working to make this happen."
president trump signs a ridiculously large DOD budget.
"Congress approved $1.56 billion for three littoral combat ships, even though the Navy only requested one."
Classic. That is when I hear the word "Conservative" or "Progressive" in relation to politics, I always laugh.
President Donald Trump on Monday signed a $716 billion defense policy bill
For perspective please note that the defecit in 2017 was $665 billion. So for all practical purpose we are borrowing the entire defense budget and in the process spending more money than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the UK, and Japan COMBINED. Call me crazy but I'm pretty sure we could put a good chunk of that money to better use.
Cheeto wouldn't even use the proper name of the bill. He dropped Senator McCain's name from it when referencing the bill...he's a child.
He's under no obligation to use the stupid name of a bill.
Every bill of any note is always named the "I Love Puppies and Rainbows" bill, even if all it does is fund the 100th version of the Robert Byrd Pig Research Institute.
So, we have demonstrably proven that the Chinese are conducting Cyber-warfare against us. This includes shipping pre-hacked devices to the United States, such as networking equipment and video surveillance systems.
Yet we impose a tariff on Canadian steel for national security purposes? WTF
The tariff's on Canada are to punish Canada for exporting Justin Bieber to us.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Nah, the backdoors were already there.
They just added another account (uncle_sam) to go alongside chairman_mao.
Considering defense is barely 16% of Fed spending, and social programs (SS, medicare, etc) is around 57%, I think I know where we should really start cutting.
Yep, Defense.
Oh you meant we should take away health care from our elderly and poor to fund a needlessly oversized military? That's weapons grade stupid. Cutting military spending is the biggest no brainer ever. We could cut the deficit in half tomorrow and still spend more on our military than every other country on earth. Social security is self sustaining and does not affect the federal deficit. We need to cut defense spending to more reasonable levels and raise taxes to cover the rest. No this would not result in fiscal Armageddon. The only other option is to cut medicare and medicaid and cutting that would be stupid and hurt a lot of people needlessly. The rest of the federal budget is inconsequential as far as the deficit goes so any debate about the deficit that doesn't involve some combination of raising taxes, cutting the military and/or cutting medicare/medicaid is a waste of time.