Senate

McConnell: Dems face choice on NDAA

by Jordain Carney - 06/16/15 10:53 AM ET

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sought to pressure Democrats to back an annual defense policy bill ahead of a procedural test on Tuesday afternoon.

“Senators will take a vote, and senators will make a choice,” the Republican leader said. “Today is every common-sense Democrat’s chance to say enough. This is a bad strategy.”

{mosads}McConnell added that, if Democrats try to block the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), they’ll be allowing “Democratic leaders to hold our military hostage.”

The Senate is expected to take a vote on ending debate to the policy bill on Tuesday afternoon.

Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) rejected the idea that Democrats were trying to harm the military, saying his caucus was just as patriotic as Republicans.

“We Democrats support our troops,” he said. “We are just as patriotic as any Republican. … We support defense just as much as our Republican friends do, but we also support the rest of our country.”

Democratic leadership has remained tight-lipped over whether they would try to block the Senate from ending debate on the defense policy bill.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that he expects Democrats will be split on voting to move forward on the bill.

“I think there’s going to be a diverse set of views from our caucus when it comes to the cloture vote and the final vote of the NDAA,” he told reporters on Monday afternoon. “If we’re fighting a fight about appropriations, then the appropriations bills are frankly the more important place to draw those lines.”

Democrats have separately pledged to block a defense spending bill as part of a push to get Republicans to come to the table and negotiate a deal to lift budget caps on both defense and nondefense spending.

“I think there’s a lot of my colleagues who want to fight this once rather than twice, fight it on the appropriations bill rather than fight it on the appropriations and authorizations,” Murphy added.

Tags Chris Murphy Harry Reid Mitch McConnell