Armed Services Committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wants to slam the revolving door shut on retired military officers and senior Pentagon bureaucrats going to work for the same defense contractors they did official business with on behalf of the government.
Her Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act would limit the influence of contractors on the military and constrain foreign influence on retired senior military officers, all in the name of “greater transparency.”
Over on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, has introduced the Department of Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act, which aims to require the Pentagon to “adapt its infrastructure and operations to address climate change.”
A whole group of House Armed Services Committee members, led by Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., have co-sponsored a bill that would limit the Pentagon’s authority to repurpose funds that were designated for military construction.
Ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, is pushing two proposals to reform how the Pentagon does business: the Continuing Acquisition Reform Act and the Accelerating Defense Innovation Act.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., have teamed up to propose a bill that would defund the New START nuclear treaty with the Russians unless it is expanded to include the Chinese.
The one thing all these initiatives have in common: Not one has a co-sponsor from the other party.
Lacking a bipartisan co-sponsor can be the kiss of death. It’s a lesson former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn, learned the hard way when he first arrived on Capitol Hill and had the idea for a bill to fund a study of service dogs, with an eye toward expanding the availability of dogs for veterans. It was a fairly uncontroversial proposal, except it did cost money.
“Very often, the only way a bill stands a chance is if you can find a co-sponsor in the other party, to make it bipartisan,” Franken wrote in his book Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, published in 2017. “That’s why we have all these unwritten rules, like addressing each other as ‘my esteemed colleague’ even when we may in fact esteem each other very little.”
Franken found a co-sponsor in Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and managed to get his bill included as an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009.
Which is about the only way the aforementioned bills will ever become law.
Take Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a newly energized crusader against sexual assault in the military, after she went public with her story of being raped by a fellow Air Force officer. Last month, McSally introduced what she described as “landmark legislation” to combat sexual assault in the ranks. With all three of her Senate co-sponsors being Republicans, the bill faced an uphill battle.
But a week later, McSally declared victory, taking credit for getting many of the bill’s provisions into the Senate version of the defense policy bill, the same way Franken got his service dog study passed.
Getting your idea into the National Defense Authorization Act is often a winning strategy because it’s one bill that always passes eventually. But even provisions that enjoy bipartisan support and make it into the legislation can face an uncertain future.
McSally’s proposals, for example, included a provision for making sexual harassment a stand-alone crime in the military, an idea supported by the Pentagon.
But that provision did not make it into the House Armed Services Committee version of the legislation, meaning it will have to be hashed out in conference committee, which is where a lot of ideas go to die.
Take the president’s Space Force, which even the Pentagon has warmed to after initial skepticism that launching and protecting satellites required an entire new branch of the armed services. It’s in the Senate bill, but so far not in the House.
The proposal is essentially a clone of a proposal by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., to create a Space Corps as part of the Air Force.
That plan had overwhelming bipartisan support, passing the House Armed Services Committee last year by a 60-1 vote, only to die in the Senate.
Simply getting a proposal into the National Defense Authorization Act, even with bipartisan backing, is not enough.
You need bipartisan, bicameral support, and that’s to get the authorization. To make sure the new policy is enacted, it has to be funded in the appropriations bill that passes in the fall, unless of course there’s another impasse, and Congress falls back on a stopgap continuing resolution.
Turns out turning a bill into law is more complicated than that old “Schoolhouse Rock!” video let on.
