Unprecedented. Congress overturns Trump’s veto on U.S. defense budget

The US Congress overturned Donald Trump’s veto on the defense budget, an unprecedented decision taken by the Senate, a chamber controlled by the Republican Party, which supported the outgoing president in the last presidential elections.

In an extraordinary session on New Year’s Day, the Senate, the upper house of Congress, contradicted the presidential veto against the budget of 740 billion dollars (about 607 billion euros) for Defense, an unprecedented “pinprick” and the weeks from the end of Donald Trump’s term, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

The bill guarantees an increase of 3% in the salaries of American troops and guides the Defense policy, consolidating decisions on numbers of military personnel, new weapons systems and military readiness, human resources policy and other military objectives.

Many programs, including military construction, could only be carried out if the project was approved.

The outgoing president had attacked Republican lawmakers in a post on the social network Twitter earlier this week, questioning whether “weak and tired Republican leadership” would allow a bad defense bill to pass.

Trump dubbed the Senate decision as “a shameful act of cowardice and a total submission of weak people to big tech”, adding: “negotiate a better law or get better leaders now”.

The Senate’s 81-13 vote followed an earlier vote in the House of Representatives, in which 322 members voted in favor of the defense budget and 87 voted against.

The Republican majority leader in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell, a man close to Donald Trump, recalled that for the past 59 years the National Defense Act has always been passed and that “in one way or another”, Congress would pass the 60 The bill before the end of the term on Sunday.

“The project looks after our brave men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform,” said McConnell, adding that it is also “a tremendous opportunity” to address national security priorities.

“It is our opportunity to ensure that we keep pace with competitors like Russia and China,” he said.

The Senate vote that overturned the veto was postponed after Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders refused to move forward until McConnell allowed a vote on a bill, backed by Trump, to support the pandemic crisis that includes payment of checks two thousand dollars to struggling Americans.

McConnell did not allow the vote and used his parliamentary power to limit voting to the Defense bill, which deflected a threat from Sanders and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to move forward with a filibuster, a political maneuver used in parliamentary context to obstruct or delay the advance of a law, eternalizing the debate on the matter in question.

Without the agreement between the two parties, the vote on the bill could have been postponed until Saturday night.

During his four-year term, Trump was successful in keeping Congress disciplined, limiting any opposition from Republicans to a minimum, but the vote on the Defense Law shows his loss of influence, further underlined by Republicans’ refusal to vote the pandemic support project, already approved by the House of Representatives, but forgotten by the Senate, despite having the approval of the outgoing president.

On January 20, Joe Biden takes office as the next US president.

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