Senate set to vote on defense bill, health care showdown looms

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Senate heads for finish line with defense vote

WASHINGTON — The Senate comes in shortly after a snowy dawn to vote on legislation ensuring that the troops are armed and the jobless don’t lose their benefits — and to take one more step toward a Christmas week showdown over health care.

The planned early morning vote Saturday on the $626 billion defense spending bill and sundry other must-pass matters was the outcome of an acrimonious struggle between Democrats determined to pass a health care bill this year and Republicans intent on using delaying tactics to stop them.

The defense bill itself, which contains $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a 3.4 percent pay raise for the military, enjoyed wide support.

But there was GOP discontent over the Democratic decision to use the bill as the engine to carry several short-term extensions of programs set to expire because of the failure of Congress to deal with them separately.

Those include two-month extensions of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, health care subsidies for those out of work, highway and transit funding, three provisions of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act and legislation shielding doctors from a steep cut in Medicare payments.

“The Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate held this bill for the troops captive,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “They knew that at the end of the year, they would stuff unrelated, must-pass legislation, which has nothing to do with the Department of Defense, or the men and women in the military … so they could get it passed.”

Democrats in turn scolded Republicans for forcing a 1 a.m. vote Friday to end a GOP-led filibuster and then requiring the full 30 hours, under Senate rules, before a final vote could be staged. Republicans have acknowledged they will use every means possible to stop the health care bill from coming to a final vote this year.

Republicans are “using the military, the soldiers, as pawns in this political game,” said Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska.

“We know that we are upon the holiday season here, although here in this chamber, it certainly doesn’t feel that way,” commented Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “There is no sense of giving and sharing and the general cooperation and cheeriness that comes at least in my family with the holiday season.”

Before leaving for the holidays, the Senate must deal with one other politically sensitive issue, raising the debt ceiling, currently at $12.1 trillion, so the Treasury can continue to borrow.

The defense bill is the last of 12 annual spending bills that Congress must pass for the budget year that began Oct. 1. The bill passed the House on Wednesday by 395-34, but Senate inaction, while not likely, could force the Pentagon to shut down programs.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday issued a joint statement urging immediate passage because the latest stopgap measure to fund the Pentagon expired at midnight Friday. “Passage today will provide important support for our foreign policy and national security priorities and ensure continuity of funding for our troops in combat and for all of the Department of Defense,” they said.

The bill contains $104 billion for weapons procurement. It has $6.8 billion to procure 30 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters while providing $465 million to develop an alternative engine for that plane, a program that the Pentagon and President Barack Obama had tried to kill.

It does shut down programs for the F-22, a fighter the Pentagon considers ill-suited for today’s insurgency warfare, and an expensive presidential helicopter.

The president has yet to request funds for his recently announced troop increase in Afghanistan, and there is no money in the bill for that.

The measure also trims personnel and maintenance accounts from previous versions of the measure to pump up weapons procurement for Afghanistan and Iraq by almost $2 billion.

The defense measure would trim $900 million from the Pentagon’s $7.5 billion budget to train Afghan security forces. It would use the money to buy about 1,400 additional mine-resistance vehicles suited for rugged conditions in Afghanistan. Lawmakers say the training program can’t absorb that much money in the coming year, so they used it for other purposes.