A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers urged a House committee to make New Hampshire the first state in the nation to pass a law to block deployment of National Guard troops to fight in an undeclared war.
State Rep. Tom Mannion, R-Pelham, said lawmakers here could send a message to the rest of the nation by passing his Defend the Guard Act (HB 104).
“Once we break the dam there are dozens of states waiting for the first state to go,” Mannion told the House Federal, State and Veteran Affairs committee during a hearing last Friday afternoon.
National Guard Adjutant General David Mikolaities said the risk that this law would lead to a loss of nearly $400 million of federal support for guard activities was not an idle threat.
Congress and federal law control whether to support troop efforts abroad, he said.
“Just cut to the chase, this is Romper Room,” Mikolaities said, referring to the series for preschool children that ran for 40 years on American television.
“It’s up for Congress to decide this, not us. I chuckle when I hear people who haven’t served in the Guard that say we need to be defended. We do not.”
Mannion is a U.S. Marine veteran with two deployments in Iraq.
Last year, the House of Representatives passed this bill by fewer than 10 votes.
At the urging of then-Senate President Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, the state Senate shipped it off to study and killed it on a voice vote.
Similar proposals have cleared state Senates in Idaho and Arizona but the House in both those states failed to support it.
Mannion pointed out that Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, had endorsed his concept while appearing as an anchor on the Fox and Friends program last year.
“To me it makes a lot of sense. I love this idea,” Hegseth said at the time.
Rep. Jonah Wheeler, D-Peterborough, said Congress needs to face pushback for its silence as presidents have committed troops to “forever wars” abroad.
“For Congress to not do its duty as outlined in the Constitution and debate before sending our 18- and 19-year-old boys into a jungle, I think, is a travesty,” Wheeler said.
But Rep. Henry Giasson, R-Goffstown and a 22-year National Guard veteran in Massachusetts, said he’s concerned the bill could degrade the state Guard’s readiness over time.
The U.S. hasn’t declared war since 1942.
Congressional action adopted in 2001 allows the president to act to protect national security and does not require a war declaration before an armed conflict, Mikolaities testified.
Governors lack any authority to withhold consent for the deployment of troops into combat, he said.
“Why would I fund a National Guard that refuses to do its primary job, which is to fight America’s wars?” Mikolaities asked rhetorically.
There are 17 state Guards with refueling centers but the New Hampshire’s Air National Guard at Pease is the only one in the country that flies the state-of-the-art KC-46A Pegasus refueler.
“I would offer to you that this would close the Pease Air National Guard base,” he warned.
