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 The full Senate was unable to consider some 500 proposed
amendments in time to pass the bill this month, so the committees'
Democratic and Republican leaders hammered out a compromise on
pressing issues such as strengthening protections for victims of
sexual assault in the military and keeping open the military prison
at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
"This is not the best way to proceed, but our troops and their
families and our nation's security deserve a defense bill, and this
is the only practical way to get a defense bill done," said
Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
panel, said on the Senate floor.
The defense panel leaders want the House to vote on the measure
before it leaves for its year-end holiday recess on Friday and a
final vote in the Senate next week.
The compromise bill authorizes $552.1 billion in spending for
national defense and an additional $80.7 billion for foreign
military operations, including in Afghanistan. The base budget is
unchanged from the 2013 bill, but war spending is $7.8 billion
lower.
It would be the third time in five years that Congress has resorted
to passing a slimmed-down defense policy bill, after similar
compromises in 2008 and 2010.
The bill does not include an amendment seeking to overhaul the way
the Pentagon handles sexual assault complaints that was proposed by
New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The Gillibrand measure would place decisions about whether to
prosecute sex crimes in the hands of professional military
prosecutors and remove it from victims' commanders. It is opposed by
most Pentagon leaders, but has attracted fairly wide support among
lawmakers.
The New York Democrat has pledged to bring her legislation up as a
standalone bill.
The measure also would leave open the detention center at Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba, where 164 terrorism suspects have been held for as long
as 12 years without charge.
However, it would loosen restrictions on President Barack Obama's
ability to send prisoners from Guantanamo to other countries, while
continuing to forbid their transfer to the United States, something
adamantly opposed by Republican lawmakers in particular.
Obama has pledged to close the prison at the Navy base.
OVERCOMING GRIDLOCK?
Congress has managed to pass a National Defense Authorization Act
authorizing spending for the military every year for 52 years, in a
rare exception to the partisan gridlock that has stalled most other
legislation.
This year's bill was passed by the House months ago, but was stalled
in the Senate as Democrats and Republicans argued over amendments.
Some Senate Republicans said on Monday they were angry that the
measure had come to the floor only last month, allowing too little
time to debate amendments.
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Levin and James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate committee,
both said a version of the bill must pass Congress this month rather
than when the House and Senate return from their holiday breaks in
January.
They distributed a letter from General Martin Dempsey, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which the top U.S. military commander
listed nearly two dozen expiring spending authorities and said
allowing the bill to be delayed until January would affect the
Pentagon's global influence.
Among other things, failure to pass the measure could interrupt the
pay of troops who are now in combat and disrupt some expensive
projects, at a huge cost to taxpayers.
"We'd be wasting not millions but billions of dollars if we don't do
this," Inhofe told a news conference after he and Levin presented
the compromise bill in the Senate.
The bill requires additional oversight of two of the Pentagon's
biggest acquisition programs — the $392 billion F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter being built by Lockheed Martin Corp and the 52-ship Littoral
Combat Ship program, which includes ships built by Lockheed and
Australia' Austal.
It called for an independent assessment of software being developed
for the F-35 fighter jet, and its complex computer-based logistic
system, as well as development of a plan for operations and
maintenance of the new coastal warships.
It was not immediately clear whether the bill would hit the House
and Senate floors in time to pass this year, but its bipartisan
support increased the chances it would be approved.
Representative Buck McKeon, the Republican chairman of the House
Armed Service Committee, said he had spoken to House leaders about
the measure but had not received an answer by Monday evening on
whether they would allow a vote.
Levin said he was meeting with Senate Democrats, and Inhofe said he
could not yet say how Senate Republicans would choose to proceed.
"We're going to try to do our best to get it passed," Inhofe said.
(Additional reporting by Andrea Shala-Esa;
editing by Christopher
Wilson, Jackie Frank and Lisa Shumaker)
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