Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is pressuring Democrats to bring to the floor a bill funding U.S. defense spending at a time when America’s adversaries are on the march around the globe.
“It’ll take a great deal more seriousness from leading Senate Democrats for the promise of American strength and leadership to carry any weight. And they could start by bringing the NDAA to the floor without delay,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday afternoon referring to the National Defense Authorization Act.
McConnell’s plea is likely to go unheeded.
This week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has scheduled votes on judges and on a motion to proceed on the Reproductive Freedom for Women Act, which aims to codify the right to access reproductive health services.
Schumer has also criticized the $895 billion House version of the NDAA bill as full of conservative amendments that wouldn’t pass muster in the Democratic controlled Senate.
“Unsurprisingly, the legislation coming out of the House … is loaded with anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice, anti-environment, and other divisive amendments guaranteed not to pass the Senate,” Schumer complained.
The House legislation, which was supported by Kentucky Reps. Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie and Hal Rogers, includes a double-digit pay raise for junior service members but also prohibits the Defense Department from paying for expenses related to abortion services. It also bars the military’s health care system from providing gender transition surgeries.
Reps. Thomas Massie and Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Democrat, voted against the bill. Rep. James Comer did not vote.
McConnell did not address the conservative amendments in his remarks and has kept his focus on increasing funding for military preparedness in order to keep pace with China.
“America is literally years behind in building the sort of production capacity we need to sustain effective deterrence or win decisively if war comes,” McConnell said.
He added that while the Biden administration deserves credit for their commitment in producing artillery shells, it hasn’t directed the same urgency toward U.S. air and missile systems and long-range weapons.
Rogers cited rising threats from China, Iran and Russia as the rationale for his vote to “deter aggression and maintain firm defense on every side.”
The McConnell-backed Senate Republican defense plan is to increase the Pentagon budget by $6 trillion over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank.
That means by 2034, the Defense Department’s budget would be $2.1 trillion, a 90% increase.
“Obviously we’re in a wartime situation worldwide … clearly this is a huge priority. So my suggestion to the majority leader is, why not bring it up?” McConnell said last week referring to the NDAA. “I think that’s a better way for us to be spending our time on something important and necessary than dealing with the assistant secretaries of this, that or the other.”
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