McCain pushes for quick action on defense bill

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday that the Senate needs to move quickly to finish work on an annual defense bill.

“I am told by the majority leader that he would like to have this legislation completed by the end of next week,” McCain, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said. “That means that we have a lot of work to do.”

{mosads}Senators on Wednesday started debate on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), months ahead of when the chamber normally tries to finish its work on the bill.

McCain said that to meet Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) deadline, he and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) will try to get permission to block senators from filing any amendments to the bill after Thursday afternoon.

“We want to give every senator an opportunity to have their amendments thoroughly vetted and debated and voted on,” he said.

It’s unclear if the two senators will be able to get consent to close off the amendment process, which could drag out work on the NDAA.

Senate Democrats are already taking aim at the annual defense bill for funneling an extra $38 billion trough the Defense Department’s Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.

The fund, meant to pay for the Pentagon’s wars, has been criticized as a slush fund to help the department avoid the congressionally-mandated budget caps.

Reed said that using the war fund to boost the Pentagon’s budget hurts the department in the long run.

“Adding funds to OCO does not solve, it actually complicates the DOD’s budgetary problems,” he said. “I think you’ll see increasingly more esoteric and exotic things in OCO funding, because that’s where the money is.”

He added that because lawmakers have been unable to reach an agreement to roll back the budget caps, they’ve taken the war budget and “grossed it up dramatically.”

Reed said that he is planning to file an amendment to the defense bill that would authorize the extra defense spending, but fence it off until Congress deals with the budget caps.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said “there is budgetary fakery” in the bill.

He warned that if senators try to use the war fund to boost the Pentagon’s budget without ending the congressionally mandated budget caps under sequestration “we’re going to be wasting our time working on bills that at the end of the day may well not get the 60 votes to proceed to final passage.”

Wednesday’s debate comes a day after the White House reissued its veto threat of the annual defense bill.

The administration’s key objection to the bill is that it uses the war fund, which is not subjected to the budget caps, to get around sequestration.

President Obama, as well as congressional Democrats, have also pledged to block an increase in defense spending without a similar increase in non-defense spending.

But McCain slammed the White House on Wednesday saying that the bill “should not be treated as a hostage in a budget negotiation.”

“The political reality is that the Budget Control Act, which the president signed, remains the law of the land, so faced with the choice between OCO money and no money, I choose OCO,” he said, adding that extra money through the war fund “is not my preferred option.”