The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday that he hopes to finish the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill before Congress leaves Washington for a Thanksgiving break.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the conference committee for the National Defense Authorization Act met on Tuesday. “We’ve got it about wrapped up,” he told reporters at the Capitol.
Asked if that meant he’d be prepared to release a final bill before Thanksgiving, he said, “I hope so.”
Lawmakers will be away from Washington next week and will return the week of Nov. 28. Experts have largely predicted that a final bill would be revealed in December.
Some of the major issues that negotiators have had to work through include whether the sage grouse will be designated as an endangered species, which could affect training on Western military bases, as well as an amendment to the bill that Democrats say allows taxpayer-funded hiring discrimination based on religious beliefs.
Some discrepancies between the House and Senate bills have already been settled, though negotiators stress that no compromises are final until the full bill is released. Lawmakers were looking at solving the $18 billion top line difference between the two bills by splitting the middle and providing an additional $9 billion to the Pentagon, though that was before the administration submitted a supplemental funding request for more than $5 billion in defense overseas contingency operations money.
A Capitol Hill aide also said the final bill will not include a provision requiring women to sign up for the draft, though it will require a report on whether the Selective Service is still needed.
