Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pressing forward with an NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) that President Obama has already threatened to veto, and could face a humiliating defeat as the White House is showing no signs of changing its mind.
McConnell is moving forward with the bill even though the President has been threatening to veto the legislation since June.
In their Official Statement of Administration Policy, the White House said:
In addition, the bill fails to support many of the needed force structure and weapons system reforms included in the President’s Budget, and undermines a new Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round that would allow DOD to properly align the military’s infrastructure with the needs of its evolving force. The President’s defense strategy depends on investing every dollar where it will have the greatest effect, which the Administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 proposals will accomplish through critical reforms that divest unneeded force structure, slow growth in compensation, and reduce wasteful overhead. The Committee’s changes would constrain the ability of DOD to align military capability and force structure with the President’s defense strategy, and would require the Department to retain unnecessary force structure and weapons systems that cannot be adequately resourced in today’s fiscal environment, contributing to a military that will be less capable of responding effectively to future challenges. The bill also includes unwarranted restrictions regarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay. If the President were presented with S.1558, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.
Elsewhere in the veto message, the White House pointed to the underlying reason for the veto, “The President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto S. 1558 and any other legislation that implements the current Republican budget framework, which blocks the investments needed for our economy to compete in the future.”
President Obama can’t sign the NDAA that McConnell is trying to pass because it would set a precedent by accepting government funding at sequester levels. President Obama has made it clear for nearly a year that he wants the sequester cuts gone.
Democrats in the Senate are mobilizing to try to keep the legislation from passing with 67 or more votes. Senate Democrats want to be able to sustain the President’s veto of the bill.
Mitch McConnell’s tenure as Majority Leader has been a total failure because he continues to pass legislation that is designed to score political points instead of becoming law. The NDAA that McConnell will pass is designed to make Democrats and the President look like they are opposed to the military.
The strategy will fail because the NDAA is loaded with cuts that harm military preparedness. Democrats would be helping the military and the rest of the country if they could successfully get the sequester cuts lifted.
Sen. McConnell is walking into another defeat because he would rather play politics instead of working with President Obama to effectively govern.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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