The vote was 51-44, nine short of the 60 needed to advance the bill. Senate rejects advancing defense bill

The Senate tried but failed to end debate on the annual defense authorization bill after a day of historic upheaval on Thursday, leaving work unfinished and casting doubt on the ultimate passage of the measure.

The vote was 51-44, nine short of the 60 needed to advance the bill.


Republicans and Democrats had said it was imperative that the Senate finish the $625 billion National Defense Authorization Act before members took their two-week Thanksgiving break. But hopes waned as lawmakers remained divided on how to amend the legislation. Its future prospects weren’t clear.

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“I just think after today, legislating’s going to be pretty tough,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt. “I don’t know whether NDAA becomes law or not,” he said.

On the other side of the Capitol, senior members of the House Armed Services Committee huddled to discuss the possibility that House and Senate leaders might have to work on a compressed schedule to iron out the differences between the two versions of the measure.

“There’s enough room there for us to get it done this year, through a number of different scenarios,” said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. “We want to make sure the House is ready to go, regardless of what the Senate does.”

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The House committee’s chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), and its ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, said in a joint statement that “time is running short to reach an agreement this year, but it has not yet run out.” They urged senators to take up the defense bill again after returning from two-week Thanksgiving recess.

While it’s not uncommon for work on the defense bill to trickle into the final days of the calendar year, lawmakers now face a significant time crunch. The Senate doesn’t plan to return from its recess until Dec. 9, while the House plans to adjourn for the year on Dec. 13. That leaves just a few days in December to resolve differences between the two chambers and finish the legislation before year’s end.

Senators have been deadlocked since Tuesday over how to proceed, with Republicans insisting on an amendment process that would allow them to vote scores of provisions. Meanwhile, Reid and other Democrats were trying to hasten the process by putting in place strict limits on the number of votes, avoiding amendments on controversial issues, including Iran sanctions and health care.

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The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the defense authorization bill in June, but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) didn’t bring the measure to the floor until this month.

The committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said Wednesday that if lawmakers didn’t resolve the impasse, “then for the first time in 52 years there will not be a defense authorization bill, in the absence of some miracle.”

On Thursday, Levin read a long list of what he said would be the problems if the defense bill didn’t pass: Troops won’t get bonuses, military construction can’t begin, school districts can’t get aid payments and many other legal authorities will lapse.

The Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, went to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon to repeat his offer to include 25 amendments for each party. Ahead of his floor speech, he said he was still hopeful that amendment votes could still happen before senators before the Thanksgiving break. “We’re 99 percent of the way there,” he said.

If his colleagues didn’t agree, Inhofe warned, he’d oppose his own bill — and later made good on his promise with a “no” vote on moving forward.

Levin later told reporters there had been at least three main obstacles to proceeding. Republicans, he said, had insisted upon amendments involving Iran sanctions and surveillance programs, as well as an amendment backed by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on Obamacare.

Democrats could not agree to those and other controversial amendments, so they attempted to move forward with no amendments, but there wasn’t enough support to do that either. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) joined Republicans in opposing an end to debate, and five senators did not vote.

After the vote, Arizona Sen. John McCain complained about Democrats’ tactics on the day in which they’d earlier used the “nuclear option” to change the rules for handling presidential nominees.

“We used to have a practice — maybe they’ll change it — of allowing votes on amendments. I know that’s an outrageous demand on my part.”

One important issue that has drawn national attention wound up becoming a sideshow. Thursday’s Senate fight over filibusters sucked the oxygen out of the debate over proposals that would change the military justice system, which backers said was necessary to support victims of sexual assault.

The chamber’s focus moved away from a controversial amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that would take decisions to prosecute sexual assault and other major crimes in the military outside the chain of command. It remained unclear on Thursday when — and if — that amendment would get a vote.

“I wanted to vote on my bill yesterday, I wanted to vote today,” she said Thursday. “But we will get a vote.”

Also awaiting a vote is a competing amendment by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that would add new reforms to the military justice system but leave the current command structure in place.

“I’m not optimistic that we’ll have a vote on anything before the Thanksgiving holiday,” McCaskill said when asked whether she believed her amendment — or Gillibrand’s — would be voted on before lawmakers recess. “I’m disappointed. I don’t understand why the Republicans wouldn’t allow us to vote on sexual assault.”

Senators who favor stronger sanctions on Iran had also hoped to attach an amendment to the defense bill. Reid said Thursday that he was committed to moving ahead with a more forceful bill on Iran sanctions when the Senate returns in early December, even after President Barack Obama asked lawmakers at the White House to hold off on new sanctions on Iran and give the negotiation process time to play out.

Corker said there’s still a chance an Iran sanctions amendment could be attached to the defense bill if it’s revived. Graham took an alternate tack, telling reporters that he’s working with Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on a stand-alone Iran sanctions bill.

But Graham added he would have preferred it as an amendment to the defense policy bill.

“The defense bill was the preferred route because that has to be signed into law,” he said. “You take that off the table — which they’ve effectively done today by not giving us that amendment — I don’t know what vehicle. But I’ll be looking for a must-do vehicle. Something that’s going to get signed into law because it has to to put the next round of sanctions on.”

McCain said he was also involved in the effort, saying he and other lawmakers would use the so-called Rule 14 process, to try to put a health care repeal bill on the Senate calendar without going through committees first.

Anna Palmer contributed to this report.