Senate

McConnell pressures Dems on defense spending fight

by Jordain Carney - 06/17/15 10:24 AM ET

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday pressured Senate Democrats to back a defense spending bill despite their threats to block it.

McConnell noted that many Democrats had supported a separate Defense authorization bill in a vote on Tuesday, and he argued that they should drop their threats of blocking the spending measure.

“I would expect everyone who votes for the Defense authorization bill would also want to support moving to defense appropriations,” the Republican leader said Wednesday morning. “I’m sure every Democratic colleague who just voted to make promises to our troops will want to actually fulfill those promises by voting for the defense appropriation bill as well.”

{mosads}The Senate voted 83-15 on Tuesday to end debate on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), despite criticism from Democrats over an extra $38 billion in war funding.

Democratic leaders had remained tight-lipped ahead of Tuesday’s vote on whether they would block the defense policy bill, but suggested that their criticism over the war fund was part of a larger fight that would come to a head on the defense spending bill.

McConnell filed cloture on the defense spending bill Tuesday morning, meaning the Senate could take its first vote on the legislation Thursday.

The Republican leader on Wednesday called the two bills “inseparable,” adding that he hopes Tuesday’s vote means Democrats have realized “this filibuster summer idea their party leaders hatched isn’t good for America’s national security or job security in their own states.”

Democrats have pledged to block the defense spending bill, as well as every other spending proposal, as part of an effort to force Republicans to make a deal lifting congressionally mandated budget caps under sequestration.

Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Republicans are trying to do a “little magic game,” adding that President Obama has threatened to veto any spending bills that increase defense spending but not nondefense spending.

“This little magic game that the Republican leader is engineering, saying ‘we’re going to take care of defense and the vast bureaucracy, we don’t care what happens to them,’ well, this vast bureaucracy is things like the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Reid said.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) added that on Thursday’s vote “what you find is a unified effort on the Democratic side to say to the Republicans ‘now is the time to sit down, not just on the defense appropriation bill, but on all of the appropriations bills.’ “

Tags Dick Durbin Harry Reid Mitch McConnell