After passage of the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill by Congress; U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) can claim a small victory to benefit a Navy officer imprisoned in Japan (Photo by Harold Mendoza on Unsplash).
WASHINGTON D.C. – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) scored one small victory for an imprisoned Navy officer in Japan during the congressional passage of the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill last week.
The 4,155-page bill was approved by the Senate on Dec. 22 by a vote of 68 to 29 with 18 Republicans backing the bill to avert a government shutdown.
The House then passed the proposal that included all 12 fiscal year 2023 appropriations bills on Dec. 23 by a vote of 225 to 201.
Following the Senate vote, Lee condemned the spending bill as “a lie” delivered to the American people by the White House and congressional Democrats, arguing that Republicans who supported the bill had never read it.
The Omnibus Spending Bill includes $858 billion in defense spending, a nearly 10 percent increase over Fiscal Year 2022; and $787 billion in non-defense, discretionary spending, a close to 8 percent increase.
It also includes nearly $85 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine and disaster relief.
The only bright spot for Sen. Lee was the Senate’s unanimous support for his amendment to the bill directing the U.S. Navy to continue to pay compensation and benefits of Lt. Ridge Alkonis, who is currently imprisoned in Japan.
“I’m grateful to my Senate colleagues for standing with the family of Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis,” said Lee after the unanimous voice vote in the Senate. “As Lt. Alkonis sits in a Japanese prison on the eve of Christmas, we cannot leave his family wondering how they will feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads.”
Lee contends that Alkonis is a pawn in a battle of wills between the Department of Defense and Japanese authorities over the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement.
On May 29, 2021, while driving down from Mt. Fuji, Alkonis was involved in a tragic accident that took the life of an 85-year-old Japanese national and her 54-year-old son-in-law.
Navy investigators concluded that Alkonis suffered an attack of “acute mountain sickness,” causing him to loose consciousness at the wheel.
But Japanese authorities, believing that Alkonis was still culpable for the accident, sentenced him to three years in prison. The Navy officer appealed, but his sentence was upheld in July of 2022.
“Clearly, the Japanese judicial system is trying to make an example of Lt. Alkonis stemming from a history of disputes over our Status of Forces agreement,” Lee said.
“If our service members can’t get fair treatment from the county they have been tasked to defend, maybe it’s time to revisit features of our Status of Forces (SOFA) agreement with Japan.”
In recent years, the U.S.-Japan SOFA has become a major political issue following instances of violent crimes allegedly committed by service members.
Although the Japanese court system has jurisdiction for most crimes committed by American service members in Japan, there are exceptions if the American was “acting in official duty,” or if the victim was another American.
In those cases the American system has jurisdiction, unless it is voluntarily waived.
The SOFA also governs military basing agreements in Japan, which remains a political hot potato, especially in Okinawa.
The Navy had informed the family of Alkonis that, due to Department of Defense accounting rules, his pay and benefits would expire on Dec. 28.
After the Pentagon failed to grant an Exception to Policy request that would have continued his pay and benefits, Lee’s amendment to the Omnibus Spending Bill directed the secretary of the Navy to continue the pay and benefits of Alkonis and his family.
Otherwise, Lee contends, the spending package is nothing but bad news for the American people.
Lee is particularly upset that the spending bill fails to include funding to maintain Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy, which allows the government to expel asylum-seekers crossing the southern border with Mexico.
Lee had proposed an amendment to the spending bill that would have included that funding, but the measure failed 50-to-47 during debate in the Senate.
That leaves the Title 42 policy still in limbo, while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to halt a lower court ruling that would allow the Biden White House to end that program.