The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act 86-11 on Thursday, setting up a confrontation later this year with the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives over competing priorities in the massive annual military spending bill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the bipartisan debate in the Senate, noting the 98 amendments were evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans.
“The NDAA and the bipartisan process we went through to get here should be a glimmer of hope for the American people, a sign that bipartisanship is alive and well in the Senate,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday night just before final passage of the bill.
The $886 billion legislation contains several key provisions, including limits on American investments and technologies in Chinese business sectors such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors; a 5.2% pay raise for military servicemembers; and $300 million in U.S. assistance to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression.
“The NDAA is our most significant opportunity to set priorities for competition with adversaries like China and Russia. It’s our chance to keep the Biden administration focused on critical missions like rebuilding America’s defense industrial base instead of the woke partisan agenda of political appointees,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this month.
The Senate did reject several key provisions that had some bipartisan support, including Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposal to give permanent residency to 80,000 Afghans residing in the United States after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban almost two years ago. A revised, narrower version of a pathway to residency for Afghans could be included in the final reconciled version of the NDAA.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s amendment to prevent military and federal worker pension investments in Chinese companies was defeated by Democrats.
“The Senate had a chance to prevent China from benefiting from our military service members and federal workers’ retirement funds. Instead, it allowed pressure from Wall Street and other special interests to block this common-sense amendment,” Rubio said in a statement Thursday.
A Republican effort to establish a lead inspector general for U.S. assistance to Ukraine also failed by a 51-48 vote Wednesday night. Several inspectors general already exist to oversee aid from individual U.S. government agencies.
“The American people deserve to have every dollar accounted for, and this amendment would have strengthened our long-running efforts to ensure fast and transparent oversights of all aspects of U.S. support to Ukraine,” Senator Jim Risch, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “Making our support efforts even more transparent for the American people would add great value.”
The Republican-majority House narrowly passed its own version of the NDAA earlier this month, 219-210. The legislation contains several conservative priorities, including banning funding for U.S. servicemembers seeking out-of-state abortions and cutting health care funding for transgender members of the military.
Schumer criticized the Republican legislation Thursday night, saying the Senate’s bill is “a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House.”
The legislation will now have to go through a reconciliation process with both chambers agreeing to a new version of the NDAA that will then be signed into law by President Joe Biden. Both chambers are now out of session until mid-September.
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