House rejects bill to restart military draft

The House of Representatives yesterday overwhelmingly rejected a Democrat-sponsored bill to revive a military draft in a last-minute vote scheduled by its Republican leadership to squelch rumors that the Bush administration is planning to reinstitute mandatory military service.

“For two months — especially on college campuses — they’ve used the draft as a fear tactic to get people to vote against George W. Bush,” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, said of Democrats.

“We’ve had enough of that. We’re going to call them on it. The Democrats are the only people that have a bill instituting the draft; we’re going to bring it out there, and we’re going to put a nail in it.”

Mr. DeLay said Democrats, including Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, have started “rumor campaigns” that Republicans are planning to restart the draft.

Mr. Kerry has said several times on the campaign trail that President Bush might use a draft, including yesterday, in Tipton, Iowa, when he listed “the possibility of a draft” among his reasons that voters might be motivated to support him.

Yesterday’s draft bill — sponsored by Rep. Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat — was defeated 402-2, with even Mr. Rangel voting against the proposal that called for reinstituting the practice abandoned in 1973 when the military converted to an all-volunteer force.

Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, and Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat, voted for the measure.

Mr. Rangel said that his bill deserved “serious consideration” and that the surprise vote, scheduled just yesterday morning, was a “blatant politicization of the issue of meeting our military staffing requirements.”

The bill, which Mr. Rangel said he introduced to make a political point that the military is being stretched too thin under Mr. Bush, would have required everyone, including women, between the ages of 18 to 26, to serve a period of military service.

The draft, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, was last used from 1948 to 1973 to fill vacancies in the armed forces that volunteer recruitment could not.

Mr. Rangel said he wanted to show that poor children — not privileged politicians’ children — are the ones fighting in Iraq.

“You’ve been caught in your own trap,” Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, California Republican, told Democrats.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Defense Department and other military experts have told him that a draft is simply not necessary.

“We don’t need a draft,” he said, adding that Democrats have been trying to scare people and that yesterday’s vote “may be the only way to put that to bed.”

He said Republicans had to stop the Internet rumors of an impending draft under Mr. Bush — rumors that he called “the biggest hoax in show business.”

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