The annual defense policy bill doesn’t spend a dollar of taxpayers’ money, but has become a new battleground in the five-year-old partisan impasse over the budget that at least some Democrats have decided isn’t worth fighting over.
The bill cleared the Senate on Wednesday by a comfortable, bipartisan 70-27 majority. Now President Obama must decide whether to make good on his veto threat because it authorizes some $38 billion in spending from a war funding account to bypass mandatory budget caps enacted in a 2011 law which was designed to solve the impasse but only made it worse.
White House officials also object to provisions in the legislation that could make it impossible for Obama to keep his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before he leaves office.
The National Defense Authorization Act sets policy for the Defense Department. The separate appropriations bill actually sets spending levels.
The $38 billion that’s at the center of the dispute won’t actually be spent unless it’s included in the annual appropriations bill. And Democrats have bottled that up in the Senate along with all the other fiscal 2016 spending measures, demanding that Republicans agree to negotiate on lifting all the caps.
With their leverage secure, 21 Senate Democrats voted to send the policy bill to Obama on Wednesday, agreeing with pleas by Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that it was the wrong battle to fight.
But the GOP wasn’t unified in Wednesday’s proceedings. Two Republicans voted against the bill: presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
In a statement, Cruz praised the legislation, but said “I could not vote for this bill because I made a promise when I was elected to office that I would not vote for any NDAA that continued to allow the president to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens by indefinitely detaining them without due process.”
Many who voted to pass the bill said they did not want to allow the dispute over spending to interfere with important policy changes that have broad bipartisan support, such as provisions to overhaul military retirement, benefits and acquisition practices, along with an outright legal ban on torture in detainee interrogations. The bill also authorizes a 1.3 percent pay raise for U.S. troops and spending in their home states that Democrats were reluctant to put at risk.
Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia called the bill “thoughtful bipartisan compromise legislation, written to the President’s budget level, that will make the investments and reforms necessary to keep America safe and support our troops.
“While I support this bill that will benefit Virginia and our military, I disagree with the strategy of using $38 billion in war funding, rather than the base budget, to fund defense,” he said. “I was encouraged to see my language was retained in the conference report calling for the repeal or modification of budget caps and the restoration of funds to the base budget, in the event that a budget deal is reached. I continue to urge my colleagues to sit down at the negotiating table and reach a long-term, bipartisan budget deal.”
Another Democrat who voted for the bill, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, urged Obama to reconsider his veto threat and sign the bill.
“At a time when our nation faces significant challenges with the rise of ISIS, [Bashar] Assad’s brutality in Syria, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, and difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s critical that we set a clear defense policy. We must protect our security and provide for our servicemembers and their families,” he said.
But the White House was unmoved. As senators voted, spokesman Josh Earnest repeated the veto threat, saying the spending “gimmick” had frustrated the administration.
“I think the frustration is rooted in the fact that both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Democrat who sits in the Oval Office, all of them agree that the current funding levels established in the budget for our national defense priorities are insufficient, that there is widespread agreement that there is additional funding that is required to ensure that our men and women in uniform have the tools they need to keep the country safe,” Earnest said Wednesday.
“And so rather than resorting to tucking this gimmick into an authorization bill, we would rather see Democrats and Republicans actually work constructively to find a responsible way to identify our national security priorities that aren’t adequately funded and make sure that they have the resources that they need.”
