The Senate on Tuesday defied a veto threat by President Obama and agreed to limit debate and advance the annual defense policy bill in spite of a partisan dispute over a provision allowing war funding to cover mandatory budget cuts required in a 2011 law.
The vote was 73-26. Sixty votes were needed to allow the bill to advance to a final vote this week.
If the legislation clears the Senate, Obama will have to decide whether to make good on his threat, which the White House repeated on Monday.
“Our position on this hasn’t changed. We continue to feel strongly about it,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
The dispute centers around $38 billion added to a war funding account that is intended to replace regular operations and maintenance funding reduced by sequestration. The war-funding account is not subject to the caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act, which lawmakers from both parties want to repeal, but have not been able to agree on a formula.
The White House, backed by congressional Democratic leaders, has derided the spending fix as a “gimmick” and has refused to support the legislation unless Republicans agree to negotiate on lifting all the caps and ending the now five-year-old budget impasse.
“Defense budgeting needs to be based on our long-term military strategy,” said Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Republicans accused Democrats of holding defense policy hostage to their desire for greater domestic social spending, which the GOP majority opposes.
“This is an authorization bill. It has nothing to do with the appropriations process,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said in an impassioned speech.
“I urge my colleagues to rethink their misguided logic here … Let’s not do this to the men and women who are serving.”
The legislation before the Senate on Tuesday was a House-Senate compromise worked out after both chambers passed the initial version of the legislation this year. The House passed the compromise on Wednesday by a 270-156 vote.
Working out differences between the two chambers, which were mostly over changes to military benefits and did not affect the funding issue at the center of the partisan dispute, delayed the bill beyond the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, when it was supposed to have taken effect. The annual legislation has not been enacted on time since September 1996.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noted that the original bill had passed in a bipartisan 71-25 vote when it first reached the Senate floor in June.
“This is not the time to flip-flop on the men and women who protect us,” the Kentucky Republican said. “This is not the time to flip-flop on America’s defense.”
