WASHINGTON — Republicans and a handful of Democrats in the Senate blocked consideration of the defense authorization bill Tuesday, dashing advocates’ hopes of ending a 17-year-old policy that prohibits gays from serving openly in the military.
Republicans held up the bill over two contentious provisions, including repeal of the ban known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” as well as a Democratic amendment that sought to attach the DREAM Act, which would give college- or military-bound illegal immigrants a green card.
Both are important to key Democratic constituencies, and lawmakers from the two parties traded jabs over what they charged was the politicization of an annual defense bill that has been passed without fail for the past 49 years.
“It really is unprecedented gridlock that we can’t just move to the defense authorization bill and debate it,” U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said of the 56-43 vote, short of the 60 votes needed to begin debate. “I don’t get it. What’s the deal?”
Arkansas Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor voted with Republicans to scuttle the bill.
Although the House of Representatives included repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in its version of the bill, it will now be much harder to get the provision in a final version this year. Prospects for repeal will get even more complicated if Democrats suffer significant election losses in November, advocates fear.
“The whole thing is a political train wreck,” Richard Socarides, a former White House adviser on gay rights during the Clinton administration, told The Associated Press.
Socarides said President Barack Obama “badly miscalculated” the Pentagon’s support for repeal, while Democrats made only a “token effort” to advance the bill.
“If it was a priority for the Democratic leadership, they would get a clean vote on this,” he told AP.
A federal judge earlier this month ruled “don’t ask, don’t tell” unconstitutional.
Still, the insistence of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the Senate vote on an amendment attaching the DREAM Act may have been the biggest obstacle.
On the Senate floor Tuesday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Republicans would consent to open debate if the DREAM Act amendment was dropped, but the move drew an objection from Reid, who is in tight race in Nevada, where Latino voters are likely to be key.
“This is a blatant political ploy in order to try to galvanize the political base of the other side, which is facing a losing election,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., citing both the DREAM Act and repeal provision of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a vote on which he said should wait until completion of a Pentagon study due Dec. 1.
Political calculations appeared to govern both sides.
Republicans complained that Democrats were shutting out GOP amendments but also that the DREAM Act had no place in a defense bill. Yet among the Republicans who voted to block consideration of the bill Tuesday were Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, DREAM Act supporters who had voted to attach the provision to the defense authorization bill in 2007.
Now on hold, the $726 billion defense authorization bill would have provided a 1.4 percent pay raise for military service members and more than $157.6 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It included new armor to make military vehicles in Afghanistan more mine-resistant as well as the cancellation of the C-17 cargo plane and the alternative engine for the joint strike fighter, both programs the Pentagon said were unnecessary.
Democrats moved quickly to cast Republicans as willing to sacrifice the welfare of troops to score political points.
“This is an incredibly important bill. It’s got a pay raise for our troops and $725 billion for the Pentagon,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. “Before I got here, I thought that this was what the Senate was supposed to do, to air these policy debates.”
Both Bennet and Udall support the DREAM Act, and both said that it had a legitimate place in the defense bill because it gives illegal immigrants who join the military legal status.
It also gives residency status to illegal immigrants who graduate from U.S. high schools and arrived in the United States as minors, if they attend U.S. colleges and universities. If they meet the bill’s criteria, the immigrants could pay in-state tuition, making it more likely they could afford college.
“The Defense Department is saying there is a defense aspect to it, because it’s part of their recruiting plan,” Bennet said of the DREAM Act. “The Defense Department and the secretary of defense is in a better position to make that judgment than politicians are.”
As it became evident Democrats would lose, Reid voted against the measure, a procedural move that allows him to revive the bill later.
A spokesman said no decision had been made as to when Reid might call up the bill again.
