The Senate voted Thursday to bring debate to a close on its $716 billion annual defense policy bill and tee up the mammoth measure for final passage next week.
A week of wrangling over whether to vote on a measure pushed by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, prohibiting indefinite detention of U.S. terror suspects derailed amendment votes on the National Defense Authorization Act. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., blocked the measure, as he has for the past six years.
An amendment sponsored by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., requiring Congress to sign off on President Trump’s steel and aluminum trade tariffs also never it made it to the floor.
The must-pass NDAA bill is a magnet for amendments and a similar clamor over measures led to an impasse last year when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., presided over the bill’s passage.
With McCain in Arizona undergoing treatment for brain cancer, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is the senior Armed Services Committee Republican and is charged with shepherding the NDAA on the Senate floor. He attempted unsuccessfully over the past week to broker a deal that could have allowed more votes on proposed amendments.
But on Thursday, Lee again tried to get a floor vote on the indefinite detention amendment and Inhofe blocked the move, challenging the measure as not germane to the overall defense bill.
The House passed its version of the NDAA last month and Senate final passage would allow the chambers’ two armed services committees to begin hammering out a final conference committee report, which must be approved by Congress.
