A U.S. Navy crewman directs an F/A-18E Super
Hornet fighter jet on the flight deck of the
aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the
Mediterranean Sea in a photo released by the US
Navy June 3, 2016. U U.S. Navy/Mass
Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anthony
Flynn/Handout...
The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a
compromise version of an annual defense policy
bill on Thursday without controversial
provisions such as requiring women to register
for the draft or allowing contractors to make
religion-based hiring decisions.
Ninety-two senators backed the $618.7 billion
National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and
seven opposed it. Because it passed the House of
Representatives by a similarly large margin last
week, the bill now goes to the White House for
President Barack Obama to veto or sign into law.
A White House spokesman told a briefing he
did not yet have a position on the bill to
report.
The 2016 bill, the last of Obama's
presidency, includes some Republican-backed
initiatives with which he has disagreed in the
past. It includes a $3.2 billion increase in
military spending, when there has been no
similar increase in non-defense funding.
The bill also bars closures of military
bases, although top Pentagon officials say they
have too much capacity, and it blocks planned
reductions in active-duty troop numbers.
And it continues policies that bar transfers
of prisoners to U.S. soil from the detention
center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which Obama had
hoped to close. While his administration has
shipped most inmates from the controversial
prison, the Democrat is not expected to
accomplish his goal of shuttering it before he
leaves office Jan. 20.
Obama's successor, Republican Donald Trump,
wants to keep Guantanamo open, and expand it.
The NDAA passed both chambers in the
Republican-led Congress with margins large
enough to overcome a veto, and the compromise
legislation features many provisions such as a
military pay raise and an expansion of a
landmark human rights bill, that are extremely
popular in Congress. [L1N1E316A]
After months of negotiation, the Senate and
House Armed Services committees unveiled a
compromise version of the NDAA last month that
left out the Russell Amendment, a "religious
freedom" measure Democrats said would have let
federal contractors discriminate against workers
on the basis of gender or sexual orientation,
overturning Obama's executive order.
Some House Republicans said they hoped to
revisit that provision after Trump takes office,
when they do not have to worry about a veto
threat from a Democratic White House.
The bill also excluded a provision that would
have required women to register for the military
draft, now that Pentagon leaders are moving to
allow them into combat.
A provision recommending that the U.S.
conducts yearly high-level military exchanges
with Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a breakaway
province, made it into the final bill.
China's defense ministry said in a statement
on its official microblog on Friday that it was
"firmly opposed" to the move, which would
"inevitably damage U.S. interests".
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Additional
reporting by Timothy Gardner, and Christian
Shepherd and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing
by Richard Chang and Clarence Fernandez)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-congress-idUSKBN13X26G