President vetoes defense measure; override possible
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump made good Wednesday on his repeated threats to veto a $741 billion defense spending bill, setting up what is expected to be the first successful veto override of his presidency during his last weeks in office.
The bill affirms 3% pay raises for U.S. troops and authorizes more than $740 billion in military programs and construction.
The impending rebuke, coming on the heels of his decisive election loss, threatens to end the White House tenure he promised would be full of “winning” instead in stinging defeat. The near-certainty that both the House and Senate will override Mr. Trump’s veto is also a harbinger of a similar fate awaiting the president if he tries to veto a pending bill to fund the government and address the coronavirus crisis, which he hinted this week he might do.
Mr. Trump’s move provoked swift condemnation, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it “an act of staggering recklessness that harms our troops, endangers our security and undermines the will of the bipartisan Congress.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called Mr. Trump’s veto “unconscionable” and said he would “look forward to overriding” it.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, avoided any criticism of Mr. Trump, but called the NDAA “absolutely vital to our national security and our troops. ... Our men and women who
be denied what they need — ever.”
The House and Senate each passed the defense bill earlier this month with strong veto-proof majorities, rejecting Mr. Trump’s insistence that it be changed to meet his oftentimes shifting demands. Both chambers are expected to sustain the twothirds majorities needed to override the president’s veto, despite pledges from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other stalwart Trump allies not to cross the president’s wishes.
In his veto message, Mr. Trump complained that the legislation includes “provisions that fail to respect our veterans’ and military’s history” — a seeming reference to instructions that the Defense Department change the names of installations commemorating Confederate leaders. He also scorned the bill as a “‘gift’ to China and Russia,” slammed the bill for restricting his ability to draw down the presence of U.S. troops in certain foreign outposts, and excoriated lawmakers for failing to include an unrelated repeal of a law granting liability protections to technology companies that Mr. Trump has accused, without significant evidence of anti-conservative bias.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Trump’s declaration that China was the biggest winner in the defense bill was false. Mr. Reed also noted the shifting explanations Mr. Trump had given for the veto.
“President Trump clearly hasn’t read the bill, nor does he understand what’s in it,” Mr. Reed said. “There are several bipartisan provisions in here that get tougher on China than the Trump Administration has ever been.”
Congress has until Jan. 3 at 11:59 a.m. — a Sunday — to override the veto and force the defense bill to become law.If they do nothing, it will expire along with the end of the two-year congressional session at noon that day. The House is planning to reconvene on Dec. 28 to hold a veto override vote, while the Senate is expected back in Washington on Dec. 29, and will hold its veto override vote thereafter.
Mr. Trump and his advisers have repeatedly objected to various provisions in the behemoth defense legislation, including its mandate to the Pentagon to rename the 10 military installations bearing titles that honor the Confederacy and the bill’s limitations on reducing troop levels in Germany, South Korea and Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump’s insistence that the defense bill become a vehicle for a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from bearing legal responsibility for content third parties post on their websites, became a breaking point between the president and congressional Republicans during the final days of negotiations over the legislation. Mr. Trump views its repeal as a way to punish social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Democrats and Republicans have agreed that Section 230, which was written in 1996, is problematic. But GOP leaders willing to accommodate Mr. Trump elsewhere bristled at his threat to hold the entire Defense Department hostage over his war with the Internet giants.
The president, however, has not been mollified by his allies’ promises to tackle an overhaul of the legislation elsewhere.