Democratic lawmakers are largely cooperating with Republicans on a sweeping defense package to authorize hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon — even as President Donald Trump promises to expand his use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
The Senate teed up debate on the annual defense policy bill Tuesday night with an 84-14 vote, preparing to approve nearly $925 billion for defense and the armed forces. Senators will consider amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act this week before voting on final passage.
The House is set to debate its own version of the bill next week, and the two chambers will have to reconcile the differences between their respective versions of the bill if members want to pass it into law by the end of the year.
Some Democrats are refusing to play ball because of Trump’s use of the National Guard in California and Washington, D.C.
“The National Guard is not for local law enforcement,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, told NOTUS on Tuesday night after voting against proceeding to debate on the legislation. “Everybody knows that. And to pass a defense authorization under these circumstances is very difficult.”
Schatz said he plans to vote against final Senate passage of the bill later this week, too.
“What he’s doing is the kind of thing that if we were in another country, we would criticize their government for mobilizing the army against their own citizens,” Schatz said. “And that’s the reason I voted ‘no.’”
Schatz and the 11 other Democrats who voted against moving forward on Tuesday night represent a minority within the Democratic party so far. (Republican Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Democrats in voting ‘no.’)
Democrats may try to secure votes on amendments demanding that Trump roll back his deployments of the National Guard or establish more stringent rules regarding how presidents may use troops domestically. But Schatz said he doesn’t expect any such efforts to succeed.
The defense authorization package typically wins broad support from lawmakers in both parties and is seen as one of the must-pass items on Congress’s annual to-do list. It is often a moment of near-unity on Capitol Hill. And this year’s debate doesn’t seem to be much of an exception for most Democrats.
“I don’t think we’re rethinking the NDAA,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told NOTUS when asked how Trump’s use of the military is affecting his party’s view of the debate. But, he said, “we’re certainly thinking about safeguards to prevent use of the military for policing” in later legislation.
The unamended version of the Senate defense package includes instructions about where the Pentagon can source materials for weapons, how to structure contracts with suppliers and provisions for pay raises for troops, among other priorities.
It doesn’t appear to substantively address the domestic use of the military, although it does mandate a report on the Defense Department’s operations related to the southern border, which will include an assessment of the Pentagon’s compliance with the Posse Comitatus Act, a law that limits how the military can operate within the United States.
Democrats have objected to Trump’s use of the National Guard, arguing it defies those limits.
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the president “willfully” broke the law in sending troops to California, overstepping bounds on using the military for domestic purposes. Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California lauded that ruling on Tuesday night.
“It’s a terrible abuse of the military,” he told NOTUS. “It impacts the military’s readiness and morale.”
Still, Schiff, like many of his colleagues, voted to proceed to debate on the defense authorization bill.
He has “tremendous concern” about Trump’s use of the National Guard, he said, but it’s “too early for me to say about the impact on the NDAA.”