By Emelie Rutherford
Senate Republicans are crying foul over potential Democratic attempts to consider the Pentagon policy bill next week with limited debate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization legislation to the Senate floor for debate next week, shortly before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) in August blocked the Senate from debating the bill. He told reporters yesterday he remains opposed to the legislation, because of items including language allowing a rollback of the Pentagon’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy barring gays troops from disclosing their sexual orientation.
However, McCain and other Republicans at the Capitol yesterday emphasized another qualm with the bill: they fear Reid will hold a cloture vote to end debate on the bill and then allow only a small number of amendments to be considered before a vote on final passage.
For such a cloture vote to pass the Senate, at least one Republican would need to vote in favor of it along with all of the Democrats.
“If (the bill is) brought forth with, in effect, a closed rule, where the parliamentary tree is filled and Republicans have no opportunity to offer amendments, that would most likely be the basis on which most Republicans would vote no on cloture, if that happens,” Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told reporters.
McCain said Republicans are opposed to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell changes in the bill. He pledged to “fight every way we can” to block the changes, which he categorized as a repeal of the gay-service policy.
Reid told reporters yesterday he will allow Republicans to vote on an amendment to strike the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell changes from the bill.
“They want to vote on it, they can have a vote on it,” Reid said at the Capitol.
Reid also said he wants to add to the legislation a controversial immigration-related amendment that some Republicans have vowed to fight.
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) maintains the defense bill would not outright repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but would give the Pentagon the power to do if research is in favor of a repeal.
McCain slammed Levin for attaching hate-crimes-related language to the FY ’10 Defense Authorization Bill, saying Levin created a precedent for attaching policy measures to the Pentagon legislation that McCain believes should not be in it.
Levin told reporters he hopes the Senate can complete debate on the FY ’11 bill in two or three days. Deliberations over the policy-setting legislation often last more than that.
The House included a rollback of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the FY ’11 Defense Authorization Bill it passed in May.
Another hot-button issue in the Pentagon authorization legislation concerns whether to support the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce. The House-passed bill authorizes the engine, which the Pentagon wants to stop developing, while the bill before the Senate does not.
The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee did not include the second engine in the FY ’11 Defense Appropriations Bill it marked up yesterday, though the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee did fund the program in its version of the legislation, which it approved in July.
The White House has threatened to veto legislation that supports the second engine, whose fate in the authorization bill likely will be decided by a House-Senate conference committee that will craft a final measure to send to President Barack Obama. Levin said he remains in support of the second engine, while McCain said he still opposes it; they will be part of the conference committee.
In case Congress does not pass the defense policy bill by the start of the new fiscal year, Pentagon and congressional officials are talking about granting the military special authorities to start new and urgent programs (Defense Daily, Sept. 10).