WASHINGTON — Measures to raise defense and nondefense spending authorization by $18 billion each failed to pass in successive Senate votes Thursday, leaving the annual defense policy bill just where it was, at $602 billion.
Defense hawks, led in the Senate by Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., had pressed to raise 2017 defense authorization by $18 billion, as Democrats fought to amend McCain's measure with an $18 billion match to fund domestic priorities, some related to national security. Each bill would have fallen under emergency wartime funding, which is exempt from sequestration budget caps.
Hawkish Republicans argued a fiscally stretched military needs the increase as it struggles to absorb readiness and maintenance shortfalls and juggle threats the world over. The bill added troops, ships, jets and tanks left out of the Obama administration's $602 billion budget request.
Ahead of the vote, McCain and SASC member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered fiery remarks from the Senate floor, blasting lawmakers they expected to vote no, casting their vote as supportive of statutory budget caps they each called "insane."
The nondefense amendment failed on a procedural vote, getting only 43 votes when it needed 60. It was sponsored by the SASC's top Democrat, Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, and the Senate Appropriations Committee's top Democrat, Barbara Mikulski, of Maryland.
Democrats, who argued a key principal of last year's hard-won bipartisan budget deal was parity between defense and nondefense spending, responded by voting against McCain's amendment. It too failed on a procedural vote, getting only 56 votes and not the needed 60. Eleven Republicans, notably Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, of Mississippi, voted with Democrats, against the amendment.
Late last month, Cochran's committee unanimously cleared a Pentagon appropriations bill that fell $1.7 billion below the president's request. However, that bill does include roughly $15 billion in hardware and programs left out of that request.
Reed and Mikulski argued ahead of the votes that not all national security needs are addressed in the Pentagon budget. Their amendment contained $3.5 billion to address US infrastructure needs; $2 billion for cybersecurity; $1.9 billion for overseas counter-Islamic State group assistance; $1.9 billion to fight Zika; and $1.9 billion for the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.
"Our national security is a function not just of our military, intelligence and other related agencies, but it's the vitality and strength of our country, the ability to grow and to afford these investments in defense, in homeland security," Reed said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other lead Democrats had threatened that if the McCain amendment passed on its own, they would upend the appropriations process over the issue of parity between defense and nondefense.
A White House veto threat still hangs over the Senate's version of the NDAA, as the Office of Management and Budget recently voiced opposition to provisions aimed at reforms to defense acquisitions and the Pentagon's organizational structure, as well as proposed limits on the president's ability to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and conduct a new round of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission process.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @ReporterJoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
