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I saw this post on Twitter.
Reagan, Carter, Bush, and Obama all vetoed the NDAA. Each time, the veto was upheld and/or the bill was revised to respond to their objections.
Is it true that these presidents also vetoed the NDAA? Which presidents (since Carter) has vetoed an NDAA before?
That claim is true but missed out Bill Clinton's veto of the FY1996 NDAA.
With Trump's veto of the FY2021 NDAA, all recent Presidents since Carter, with the exception of George H. W. Bush, have vetoed an NDAA during their tenure.
| NDAA | President | Vetoed Bill | Reasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY1979 | Jimmy Carter | H.R. 10929 veto override failed in House (191-206) |
President Carter objected to the bill's authorization of $1.93 billion for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Citing plans to request a less expensive, conventionally-fuelled carrier in the next DOD budget, President Carter complained that, in order to fit the nuclear-powered ship into the agreed budget level, Congress denied funds the Administration had requested for weapons that would beef up the defense of NATO.1 |
| FY1989 | Ronald Reagan | H.R. 4264 | President [Reagan] contended that U.S. leverage in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union would be weakened by several elements of the bill including a 20% reduction from the budget request for ballistic missile defense, a requirement to retire two missile-launching submarines, and a slowdown of efforts to develop a rail-mobile launcher for the MX ICBM.1 |
| FY1996 | Bill Clinton | H.R. 1530 veto override failed in House (240-156) |
President [Clinton] singled out as particularly objectionable a Senate-originated provision calling on DOD to be ready to deploy by 2003 a multi-site ballistic missile defense system to protect U.S. territory. Clinton contended that this provision was inconsistent with the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and, therefore, could induce Moscow to abandon other arms control agreements.1 |
| FY2008 | George W. Bush | H.R. 1585 | [President Bush opposed] Section 1083 of the bill which would have made assets of the Iraqi government that were located in the United States liable to seizure in lawsuits filed by persons who had been victims of the government of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In his veto message, the President contended that the post-Saddam Iraqi government would need those assets to help the country recover from the adverse effects of Saddam's rule.1 |
| FY2016 | Barack Obama | H.R. 1735 | [President Obama objected] to the fact that H.R. 1735 would circumvent the defense spending cap set by the Budget Control Act of 2011 by including in the authorization for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) authorization for appropriation of $38 billion intended to cover costs in DOD's so-called "base budget."2 |
| FY2021 | Donald Trump | H.R. 6395 passed House (322-87) and Senate (81-13) over veto |
[President Trump opposed] a provision that renames military bases named after Confederate generals as well as Congress' unwillingness to include a repeal of Section 230, the regulation that shields social media companies from lawsuits over user content.3 |
Sources:
