House Republicans on Thursday called for the president to lift his veto threat on the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill that the House passed late Wednesday night.
The bill, which passed the House by a 277-147 vote, uses $18 billion from a war fund for services’ unfunded baseline priorities. The budgetary move means money for U.S. troops’ missions overseas will run out in April and force the next administration to get a supplemental funding bill through Congress just months after taking office.
The president threatened a veto on the bill both because of the funding mechanism and provisions to keep Guantanamo Bay open. Defense Secretary Ash Carter also said he would recommend a veto.
But GOP lawmakers said a veto would reject a bill that seeks to improve the “readiness crisis” facing troops.
“The president should sign this bill, should honor our men and women in uniform and should not look to hold this bill hostage for increased domestic expenditures,” Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, said.
The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act matches the president’s requested funding level, but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and leader of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said he will push to increase funding when the bill is expected to be on the Senate floor next week.
Asked how he will reconcile the two bills in conference, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said it’s too soon to say since it’s unclear if McCain will be able to secure more funding.
“We’ll see how that goes,” Thornberry said. “We’ll take it a step at a time.”
Another discrepancy between the two chambers’ bills is that the Senate bill requires 18- to 26-year-old women to register for the draft, while that language was stripped out of the House bill on the floor.
Thornberry said he believes the first step is to look at whether the Selective Service is even still needed.
“We need to study whether we need Selective Service at all before we start to decide who is included,” he said.
