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The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate handed the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act 86-11 on Thursday, organising a confrontation later this yr with the Republican-controlled U.S. Home of Representatives over competing priorities within the large annual army spending invoice.
Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer praised the bipartisan debate within the Senate, noting the 98 amendments had been evenly divided amongst Democrats and Republicans.
“The NDAA and the bipartisan course of we went via to get right here ought to be a glimmer of hope for the American folks, an indication that bipartisanship is alive and effectively within the Senate,” Schumer mentioned on the Senate flooring Thursday night time simply earlier than closing passage of the invoice.
The $886 billion laws comprises a number of key provisions, together with limits on American investments and applied sciences in Chinese language enterprise sectors equivalent to synthetic intelligence and semiconductors; a 5.2% pay elevate for army servicemembers; and $300 million in U.S. help to Ukraine to fight Russian aggression.
“The NDAA is our most important alternative to set priorities for competitors with adversaries like China and Russia. It is our likelihood to maintain the Biden administration targeted on essential missions like rebuilding America’s protection industrial base as a substitute of the woke partisan agenda of political appointees,” Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell mentioned earlier this month.
The Senate did reject a number of key provisions that had some bipartisan help, together with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar’s proposal to offer everlasting residency to 80,000 Afghans residing in the USA after the autumn of Afghanistan to the Taliban nearly two years in the past. A revised, narrower model of a pathway to residency for Afghans may very well be included within the closing reconciled model of the NDAA.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s modification to forestall army and federal employee pension investments in Chinese language corporations was defeated by Democrats.
“The Senate had an opportunity to forestall China from benefiting from our army service members and federal employees’ retirement funds. As an alternative, it allowed strain from Wall Road and different particular pursuits to dam this commonsense modification,” Rubio mentioned in an announcement Thursday.
A Republican effort to ascertain a lead inspector normal for U.S. help to Ukraine additionally failed by a 51-48 vote Wednesday night time. A number of inspectors normal exist already to supervise assist from particular person U.S. authorities companies.
“The American folks should have each greenback accounted for, and this modification would have strengthened our long-running efforts to make sure quick and clear oversights of all features of U.S. help to Ukraine,” Senator Jim Risch, the rating member on the Senate International Relations Committee, mentioned in an announcement. “Making our help efforts much more clear for the American folks would add nice worth.”
The Republican-majority Home narrowly handed its personal model of the NDAA earlier this month, 219-210. The laws comprises a number of conservative priorities, together with banning funding for U.S. servicemembers looking for out-of-state abortions and slicing well being care funding for transgender members of the army.
Schumer criticized the Republican laws Thursday night time, saying the Senate’s invoice is “a stark distinction to the partisan race to the underside we noticed within the Home.”
The laws will now must undergo a reconciliation course of with each chambers agreeing to a brand new model of the NDAA that may then be signed into legislation by President Joe Biden. Each chambers are actually out of session till mid-September.
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