Armed Services panel could bypass Senate floor for defense bill

The Senate Armed Services Committee is considering bypassing
the Senate floor and taking the Defense authorization bill straight to
conference committee, sources tell The Hill.

{mosads}The move is only being weighed as a contingency option, and
the committee’s first preference is to get the bill passed through regular
order during the lame-duck session, according to three sources with knowledge
of the committee’s deliberations.

But preparations are being made to skip the floor if needed
so the bill can pass before the end of the year, continuing a streak of 50
years that the defense policy bill has been signed into law.

“Chairman [Carl] Levin (D-Mich.) is going to be looking at
all the options he’s got,” said one defense source. “He doesn’t want to have a
big asterisk under his tenure of the chairmanship of not being able to get the
defense authorization bill done.”

Levin’s office declined comment for this story.

Both Levin and House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon
(R-Calif.) want to get the bill passed, and the disagreements between the two
chambers are relatively minor compared to prior years.

The bill has been stalled by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) since it
passed out of committee in May. Reid didn’t want to put the bill on the
floor in the height of the election season, in part to avoid GOP attacks on the
president over sequestration cuts to defense.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member on the Armed
Services Committee, railed against Reid several times on the floor for not
bringing the bill up in the summer months. 

Levin has urged Reid to give the defense bill floor time in the lame-duck sesssion, and he may get it amid the fiscal cliff deliberations. But the bill would take several days with many amendments, and the session will be
jam-packed with other high-priority pieces of legislation.

While the election is over, the bill could still be stymied
by the sequestration fight that will be a key part of the fiscal cliff debate, sources say.

If the authorization bill were to bypass the Senate floor,
the House and Senate panels would likely convene an informal conference
committee to hash out their differences.

Once an agreement was reached, the bill could move forward
in two ways, sources say. The House could introduce the conference report as a
new bill, pass it and send it to the Senate, or the Senate could strike the
full defense bill and insert the new language on the floor.

The Senate would still have to pass the bill, of course, but
taking the alternative routes could avoid the lengthy amendment process on the floor.

The House passed the Defense authorization bill in May.

Sources stressed that both committees — whose staffs have started
meeting about the conference process — want to avoid exercising the option of
bypassing the Senate floor, a process nicknamed “ping-pong.”

But the committees also insist that the defense bill, which
sets military policy and provides things such as pay raises for troops and war
funding, must pass this year.

While there are frequently controversial measures in the
authorization bill, it nearly always passes with large bipartisan majorities.
The Senate Armed Services Committee passed it unanimously in May.

One of the biggest differences between the House and Senate
bills is the overall topline funding number, as the two sides are approximately
$3 billion apart on a bill that tops $600 billion. That fight has roots in the
Budget Control Act’s reduction of military spending.

There are also several policy issues in the House bill, such
as the banning of gay marriage ceremonies on military bases and the creation of
an East Coast missile defense site, which would have to be reconciled with
opposition in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The contingency plan for the defense bill is not a new idea. The Armed Services committees had to scramble when the “don’t ask, don’t
tell” fight stalled the defense authorization bill in 2010.

Congress wound up passing a new version of the authorization
bill without the “don’t ask” language in the final days of the lame-duck
session, while repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military in
separate legislation.