The Senate on Wednesday cleared the annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon for fiscal 2016, sending it to President Obama, who must now either make good on his threat to veto it or back down and sign it into law.
With a final tally of 70-27, the Senate has enough votes to override Obama’s veto, but Senate Democrats have said they would not vote to do so. In the House, where the bill passed 270-156 on Oct. 1, Democrats have enough votes to prevent it from becoming law over Obama’s objections.
The massive bill contains important provisions to overhaul military retirement, benefits and acquisition practices that have drawn broad bipartisan support. It also authorizes a 1.3 percent pay raise for U.S. troops and an outright legal ban on torture in detainee interrogations.
But the bill has become snagged on a partisan dispute over a provision allowing war funding to make up for mandatory budget cuts required in a 2011 law. And the White House also objects to new restrictions on the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that may make it impossible for Obama to keep his promise to close the military prison there.
The funding dispute centers around $38 billion added to a war funding account that is intended to replace regular operations and maintenance funding capped 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.
“It violates the consensus that was agreed to when we passed the [Budget Control Act], that defense spending and other than defense spending be treated equally,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, noting that the one-year fix also complicates the budgeting problem the Pentagon already is having.
“This debate is not about which account we put the money in. It’s a fundamental debate about how we fund the government.”
Republicans accused Democrats of holding defense policy hostage to their desire for greater domestic social spending, which the GOP majority opposes. Though nearly all of them also oppose sequestration, they want to maintain military spending at a higher level, citing an increasingly dangerous world.
“This veto threat is about one thing and one thing only, and that’s one word: politics,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain said, calling on lawmakers to solve the budget impasse through the appropriations process and not hold the military hostage to Washington’s “dysfunctional” politics.
“The president wants to take a stand for greater domestic spending and he wants to use the vital authorities and support of the men and women in uniform that they need to defend the nation as leverage. At a time of increasing threats to our nation, this is foolish, misguided, cynical and dangerous,” the Arizona Republican said.
