Senators voted on several amendments over the course of Wednesday and into Thursday evening to close in on finishing work on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
They are expecting a late night on Thursday, with eight additional amendment votes slated. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hasn’t yet set a vote on the bill, but senators seem poised to wrap up the legislation as quickly as possible to leave D.C. for the August recess.
The $886 billion NDAA, expected to pass the Senate with broad bipartisan support, will next be negotiated with the House’s version of the bill before heading to President Biden’s desk for a signature.
But Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill on Wednesday that lawmakers “could be” needed to stick around until Friday to officially finish up, pointing to a number of “odds and ends.”
Those include a second manager’s package of amendments that members are trying to put to bed and a “handful of outstanding requests we have from members.”
“It’s just a lot of moving parts,” Thune said, adding the intelligence authorization package is also an item senators have to pass. He added to reporters later on that the process is “trending well.”
The Senate opened consideration of the NDAA last week and has tried to keep the package on the bipartisan rails that did not exist in the House. House Republicans passed an NDAA bill on their own that included a number of provisions that fall within the cultural wars raging in the U.S.
“I’ve said repeatedly that the NDAA is an opportunity for the Senate to show we can work on the biggest issues facing our country through bipartisanship, cooperation, honest debate,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “That’s what we have seen play out so far here on the floor: bipartisanship.”
“The NDAA process in this chamber is a welcome departure from the contentious, chaotic, and partisan race-to-the-bottom we saw in the House,” he added.
The end-of-the-week process is not expected to be completely smooth sailing, though. One stumbling block could come in the form of a push by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for an amendment vote on a measure to give permanent residency to roughly 80,000 Afghans who’ve come to the U.S. following its 2021 exit from Afghanistan.
Lawmakers earlier in the week overwhelmingly passed a couple of bipartisan amendments aimed at increasing U.S. competitiveness with China. Two votes held on Tuesday won 91 votes each: one to boost transparency of investments by American entities in sensitive technologies in adversarial nations, and another blacklisting China from purchasing U.S. farmland.
Those overwhelming votes earned praise from Schumer, who hailed the ability for members to “unite” to take on the Chinese.
“It’s not often that 91 Senators can unite on a single measure, let alone two measures,” Schumer added.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
