Overnight Defense: Senate sends defense bill to Trump’s desk | McCain, Warren spar with Pentagon nominee | Mattis sees opening for North Korea talks

by Ellen Mitchell - 11/16/17 7:56 PM ET

THE TOPLINE: The Senate on Wednesday passed by voice vote fiscal 2018’s nearly $700 billion defense policy bill.

The vote, which comes after Tuesday’s 356-70 House approval, sends the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

The compromise version hashed out by Senate and House negotiators would authorize $626.4 billion for the base defense budget and $65.7 billion for a war fund known as Overseas Contingency Operations.

The money would go toward a 2.4 percent pay raise for service members, an increase of 20,000 active duty and reserve troops across the services, bulked up missile defense, increased operations in Afghanistan and more ships, planes and other equipment.

The bill is moving forward, though, without an agreement in Congress to raise budget caps, which NDAA funding levels burst through.

That means some of the money authorized could end up not coming to fruition.

In touting the bill’s passage, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) acknowledged it busts spending caps by more than $80 billion and called on Congress to use the bill’s figures as a baseline for budget negotiations.

The Hill’s Rebecca Kheel has more here.

MCCAIN, WARREN SPAR WITH PENTAGON NOMINEE ON INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday threatened to delay the Lockheed Martin executive in line for the Pentagon’s top policy job after the nominee sidestepped questions on future conflicts of interest.

The senior vice president of Lockheed Martin International, John Rood, would not confirm to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that he would refuse to seek a waiver that would allow him to participate in matters involving the company in his new role.

Rood, up to be the next under secretary of defense for policy, has signed a White House ethics pledge to recuse himself from all decisions involving Lockheed for two years and divest himself from the defense contractor.

But ethics laws in place allow him to apply for a waiver from that recusal, to possibly be involved in policy discussions that include the sale of Lockheed products to foreign countries.

“Will you commit not to seek such a waiver during your time in office?” Warren asked during a Senate Armed Services hearing.

Rood would only offer that he would live “very scrupulously” by the ethics agreement he signed, but did not rule out the waiver.

Warren pressed him on the matter and after Rood again declined to say yes or no, McCain, who is the committee’s chairman, warned: “I suggest you answer the question or you’re going to have trouble getting through this committee.”

McCain added that he would give Rood the question in writing “because, obviously, you are ducking the answer here.”

McCain on many occasions has criticized the Trump administration’s heavy used of defense industry executives as Pentagon nominees.

Read the rest here.

MATTIS SEES OPENING FOR TALKS WITH NORTH KOREA AFTER LULL IN MISSILE TESTS: Defense Secretary James Mattis on Thursday indicated that a recent halt in North Korean nuclear and missile testing may signal an opportunity for talks, though Pentagon officials cautioned that it is too soon to read into the pause.

“So long as they stop testing, stop developing, they don’t export their weapons, there would be opportunity for talks,” Mattis said on a military plane en route to U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, according to Reuters.

North Korea has not undertaken a missile or nuclear test for two months. The pause follows 15 missile tests and one hydrogen bomb explosion within nine months.

Mattis did not give any reasons for why North Korea hadn’t recently undertaken tests, but said the Pentagon was closely watching the country, Reuters reported.

Pentagon chief spokeswoman Dana White, however, said that “it’s perilous to predict anything about what North Korea does or doesn’t do, but we’re continuing to monitor the situation.”

More on the story here.

And the White House said Thursday that President Trump will announce next week whether he will put North Korea back on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The Hill’s Jordan Fabian has that story here.

DEM DISCUSSES FRANKEN AS SHE UNVEILS BILL TO TACKLE SEXUAL ASSAULT IN MILITARY: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) says she believes the woman accusing fellow Democratic Sen. Al Franken (Minn.) of groping and kissing her without consent during a USO tour in 2006.

Gillibrand’s remarks came after Leeann Tweeden, a morning radio anchor in Los Angeles, wrote a post on the radio station’s website Thursday in which she said Franken grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping during a USO tour to entertain troops in the Middle East in December 2006.

Gillibrand briefly answered questions on Franken after a press conference where she re-introduced a bill to tackle sexual assault in the military.

Read the rest here.

PENTAGON RETWEETS THAN DELETES POST CALLING FOR TRUMP RESIGNATION: The Pentagon’s official Twitter account on Thursday retweeted then quickly deleted a post that included a call for President Trump to resign.

The Defense Department account, which has more than 5.2 million followers, retweeted a post that called for Trump to resign from the presidency, for Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore to end his campaign and for Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to resign from Congress.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement that an authorized operator of the Defense Department’s official Twitter site “erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense. The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.”

Read the rest here.

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW:

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson will give the keynote speech at the Logistics Officer Association Symposium at 8 a.m. at 8 a.m. in Washington.

The National Defense Industrial Association will hold a U.S.-Finland Defense and Security Industry Seminar beginning at 8 a.m.

ICYMI:

— The Hill: Pentagon begins research on missile banned by arms treaty with Russia: report

— The Hill: Watchdog: Troops say they were told to ignore Afghan child sex abuse

— The Hill: Senate passes battlefield medical approvals bill

— The Hill: Trump urges UN to renew Syria chemical weapons probe

— The Hill: Russia though blocked the effort to renew the chemical weapons inquiry

— The Hill: DHS official resigns over past racial remarks

— Defense News: US official: If Turkey buys Russian systems, they can’t plug into NATO tech