U.S. Senate overrides Donald Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act

Despite hav­ing been vetoed by Don­ald Trump, the 2020 William M. (Mac) Thorn­ber­ry Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA) has now become law after the Unit­ed States Sen­ate joined the U.S. House in over­rid­ing Don­ald Trump’s veto by an extreme­ly lop­sided mar­gin of eighty-one to thir­teen.

The NDAA, as its name sug­gests, is the vehi­cle that Con­gress uses to make mil­i­tary and defense appro­pri­a­tions. It is one of the few recur­ring pieces of leg­is­la­tion that still typ­i­cal­ly receives broad bipar­ti­san sup­port from mem­bers of Con­gress, who tend to be extreme­ly afflu­ent (about one in two mem­bers of Con­gress are mil­lion­aires) and sup­port­ive of ever-big­ger bud­gets for the Pentagon.

The House got the veto over­ride par­ty start­ed on Mon­day when it vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly for the imple­men­ta­tion of H.R. 6395.

The bill has pro­vi­sions in it that Don­ald Trump does not like, includ­ing one secured by Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren that gets the ball rolling on renam­ing all the mil­i­tary bases absurd­ly named for trai­tor­ous Con­fed­er­ate generals.

Con­sid­er­a­tion of the veto over­ride had been held up by Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders (I‑Vermont), who has been demand­ing the Sen­ate pass leg­is­la­tion to autho­rize $2,000 direct pay­ments for Amer­i­cans for COVID-19 relief.

All of the Democ­rats in the Sen­ate sup­port vot­ing on the leg­is­la­tion to autho­rize the $2,000 pay­ments, but most Democ­rats were unwill­ing to risk the veto over­ride not get­ting done before the cur­rent Con­gress is forced to adjourn on Sunday.

“I just took to the floor again to demand a vote on $2,000 sur­vival checks,” said Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer on Twit­ter after the suc­cess­ful over­ride, keep­ing the focus on Democ­rats’ COVID-19 relief efforts.

“Sen­a­tor Thune (R‑SD) object­ed. Sen­a­tor Sanders again demand­ed a vote on $2000 checks— and then on Sen­a­tor McConnell’s own bill. Sen­a­tor Cornyn object­ed (R‑TX) for Sen­a­tor Toomey (R‑PA). Democ­rats will not stop fighting.”

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing To Over­ride Trump’s Veto: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Lisa Murkows­ki and Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

Vot­ing To Sus­tain Trump’s Veto: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR)

The oth­er eleven sen­a­tors who vot­ed nay were Cory Book­er (New Jer­sey), Mike Braun (Indi­ana), Tom Cot­ton (Arkansas), Ted Cruz (Texas), Josh Haw­ley (Mis­souri), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Mike Lee (Utah), Ed Markey and Eliz­a­beth War­ren (Mass­a­chu­setts), Rand Paul (Ken­tucky), and Bernie Sanders (Ver­mont).

Kel­ly Loef­fler and David Per­due of Geor­gia, who are fight­ing for their polit­i­cal lives in a pair of runoff elec­tions that will con­clude on Jan­u­ary 5th, did not vote. Nei­ther did Repub­li­cans Cory Gard­ner (Col­orado), Lind­sey Gra­ham (South Car­oli­na) or Ben Sasse (Nebras­ka). Doug Jones of Alaba­ma also missed the vote.

The NDAA would do the fol­low­ing, as sum­ma­rized by congress.gov:

The bill autho­rizes appro­pri­a­tions to DOD for

• Pro­cure­ment, includ­ing air­craft, weapons and tracked com­bat vehi­cles, ship­build­ing and con­ver­sion, and missiles;
• Research, Devel­op­ment, Test, and Evaluation;
• Oper­a­tion and Maintenance;
• Work­ing Cap­i­tal Funds;
• Chem­i­cal Agents and Muni­tions Destruction;
• Drug Inter­dic­tion and Counter-Drug Activities;
• the Defense Inspec­tor General;
• the Nation­al Defense Sealift Fund;
• the Defense Health Program;
• the Armed Forces Retire­ment Home;
• the Space Force;
• Over­seas Con­tin­gency Oper­a­tions; and
• Mil­i­tary Construction.

The bill also autho­rizes the FY2021 per­son­nel strengths for active duty and reserve forces and sets forth poli­cies regarding

• mil­i­tary personnel;
• acqui­si­tion pol­i­cy and management;
• inter­na­tion­al programs;
• Nation­al Guard and Reserve Force facilities;
• com­pen­sa­tion and oth­er per­son­nel benefits;
• health care;
• mat­ters relat­ing to COVID-19 (i.e., coro­n­avirus dis­ease 2019);
• DOD orga­ni­za­tion and management;
• civil­ian per­son­nel matters;
• mat­ters relat­ing to for­eign nations; and
• strate­gic pro­grams, cyber, and intel­li­gence matters.

The bill autho­rizes appro­pri­a­tions for base realign­ment and clo­sure activ­i­ties, and mar­itime matters.

The bill autho­rizes appro­pri­a­tions and sets forth poli­cies for Depart­ment of Ener­gy nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­grams, includ­ing the Nation­al Nuclear Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and the Defense Nuclear Facil­i­ties Safe­ty Board.

The bill also sets forth poli­cies regard­ing cer­tain fed­er­al activ­i­ties relat­ed to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, includ­ing imple­men­ta­tion by the Pres­i­dent of a Nation­al Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ini­tia­tive to sup­port research and devel­op­ment, edu­ca­tion, and train­ing programs.

The Unit­ed States Sen­ate is rarely in ses­sion on New Year’s Day, but Trump’s veto forced Mitch McConnell (who loves big gov­ern­ment, as long as it’s a cer­tain kind of big gov­ern­ment) to sched­ule a spe­cial hol­i­day ses­sion in order to get the NDAA approved as one of the cham­ber’s final acts of the cur­rent Congress.

H.R. 6395 is the first bill to have been imple­ment­ed by Con­gress over the objec­tions of Don­ald Trump through a veto override.