One of the first items on the Senate’s to-do list once it returns to Washington next week is a third try at prying loose the fiscal 2017 defense spending bill.
A cloture vote on the defense appropriations bill is scheduled for next week, said Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Senate Press Gallery said the vote is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Cloture votes cut off debate and allow a measure to be voted on.
“Dems have filibustered this troop funding twice, but they’ll have another chance next week,” Stewart said.
Two procedural votes to formally take up the spending bill on the floor previously failed: on a 50-44 vote July 7, and by a 55-42 vote July 14.
Democrats have refused to move the bill forward because they want to ensure domestic spending gets an increase. Democratic leaders have said that they fear passing the defense appropriations bill would allow Republicans to get away with funding other spending bills through a continuing resolution, and have pushed for an omnibus to make sure both defense and nondefense get budgets.
But Republicans have criticized the blocking tactics as one that harms troops. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed Democrats for refusing to take up a bill that funds benefits for troops and the defense of the nation.
“For pure, pure partisan and political reasons, we will not be moving forward to consider a bill to train, equip the men and women who are in the military, to give them their pay and benefits, and defend this nation,” McCain said in July. “How do you do that in good conscience?”
The hold up on the defense appropriations bill will likely force the Pentagon to start the fiscal year on a continuing resolution in October, Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told reporters this summer. Continuing resolutions fund budgets at the previous year’s level, and do not allow for new contracts to be signed.
The stalled appropriations bill is also delaying negotiations on the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act because of discrepancies in the House and Senate top lines that must be settled by appropriators. Harrison said lawmakers must know what spending level they can mark to before they wrap up conference on the policy bill.
“I don’t think they can finish working out the differences between the House and Senate authorization bills until they figure out the appropriations level,” Harrison said. “And I don’t think they figure out that appropriations level until after the election because the Senate didn’t actually pass their defense appropriations bill before they left, and so that conferencing really can’t start because we don’t really know where the Senate’s going to end up.”
