DADT still holding up defense budget bill - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

DADT still holding up defense budget bill

Two days of hearings, 362 pages of Defense Department analysis and research, and the announcement by three Republican senators that they will vote to repeal military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is not enough to break a procedural logjam in the Senate that is holding up passage of the 2011 defense authorization bill.

Even with the three Republican votes, the Senate is at least one vote short of the 60 needed to overcome a Republican-led filibuster of the defense bill because it contains a repeal of the policy that forbids open service by gay. Blocking consideration of the entire bill is the only option for senators who support the current policy because their 41 combined votes are not enough to strip the gay ban repeal from the bill if it comes up for a vote.

“Republicans know they do not have the votes to take the repeal out of the defense authorization bill, so they are holding up the whole bill,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader, said Monday.

“When they refuse to debate, they also hold up a well-deserved raise for our troops, better health care for our troops and their families, [and] equipment like MRAPs,” he said.

But Reid’s statement is not strictly true. The Senate version of the annual defense policy bill does not include any military raise because the Senate Armed Services Committee did not alter the Obama administration’s plan to provide a 1.4 percent all-ranks increase in basic pay effective Jan. 1.

Troops will get that raise regardless of whether the defense bill passes, as long as Congress does not pass any legislation to change the amount. The House version of the defense bill includes a 1.9 percent raise.

But for that slightly larger raise to become a reality, Congress would have to pass either the House version of the bill or some other legislation.

Since the Defense Department issued its report and troop survey last week and the Senate Armed Services Committee held two days of hearings about the potential policy change on “Don’t ask, don’t tell,”, three Republican senators have indicated they would vote to repeal the policy.

Richard Lugar of Indiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts said they would vote for repeal as long as the current wording of the Senate bill language does not change. That language requires certification that the services are ready to implement repeal, that morale and combat readiness will not be harmed, and that Republicans are allowed to offer amendments to the larger defense bill.

Their announcement leaves a split, with 59 senators ready to debate the defense bill and 41 opposed, and with the Senate aiming to wrap up the 2010 legislative session by Dec. 17, leaving just two weeks to end the impasse.

Senate aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there is enough other unfinished business that Reid can delay a vote on the defense bill to see if any minds may change. If he can muster 60 votes to allow debate on the defense bill, Reid would like to limit the number of amendments to 10 for Democrats and 10 for Republicans, although some noncontroversial amendments could be bundled into packages.

If the Senate were to somehow pass the bill, differences between it and the version passed by the House in May would have to be reconciled before a final vote in the House and Senate.

Informally, the staffs of the House and Senate armed services committees have been negotiating since August to work out many differences, but a handful of thorny issues remain, with little time for an agreement to be struck, Senate aides said.