Budget Passed, But Time Crunch on NDAA Remains

Congress may not pass a National Defense Authorization Act in session for the first time in 51 years—and mostly because of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s reluctance to negotiate, according to Senator Jim Inhofe.

Inhofe joined host Frank Gaffney on Thursday’s Secure Freedom Radio to discuss the budget talks and where negotiations on the NDAA stand. He gave a rundown of what exactly has held up proceedings, and why it would be so disastrous if legislators failed to pass an NDAA.

“What happened to bring us to this point is the House passed a budget, an NDAA budget. The Senate did not. The Senate did not because, quite frankly, Harry Reid didn’t allow us to have amendments and there are a lot of Republican members who really wanted to have amendments. As a result of that, there’s no bill,” Inhofe said.

Emphasizing the pressure legislators are now under, Inhofe explained that in order to get a bill passed before the Senate adjourns for recess, the bill that was approved by the House needs to be approved by the Senate by the end of next week—not much time to get such a complicated bill through both houses and before President Obama.

Inhofe argued that some lawmakers’ assumptions that an NDAA could safely be put off until January are flawed, and especially perilous considering the importance of the bill.

“I think this is singularly the strongest and most significant bill of the year, every year. Now, for 51 consecutive years we have passed an NDAA, because that takes care of our fighting troops and for all of the obvious reasons. This would be the first time—in fact, only twice in the last 51 years has it gone into January. The bill was done in December in both cases, but the president vetoed it and they had to override the veto. So, for practical purposes it’s always before January,” said Inhofe. “Well, a lot of them are saying ‘we’ll just kick it into January. We’ll tack it onto the CR.’ That doesn’t work that way because there are too many things in the legislation. Not just this year, but every year in an NDAA.”

All is not lost yet, however, Inhofe explained, thanks to an attempt by the group known as the “Big Four” to hash out an agreement. “Because the House and the Senate did not come together to pass a bill, the Big Four got together a week ago Monday. I’m one of the Big Four–that’d be the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House [Armed Services Committee], [and] the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Senate [Armed Services Committee]—and we sat down for several hours and just went through every contentious issue and drafted our bill in three hours. We should have done this last May, but they didn’t do it. Harry wouldn’t bring it to the forefront so we could consider it, so we did it.”