Congress Overturns Trump Veto On Defense Bill After Political Detour

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., at the Capitol on Wednesday. The Senate voted Friday to override President Trump’s veto on the annual defense bill.





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Susan Walsh/AP



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Trump, however, supports preserving the names of figures such as Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg and others on Army bases and other military infrastructure that now bear them. The president dismissed his last Senate-confirmed defense secretary, Mark Esper, in part over a split on that issue.

So Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act and also complained that Democrats wouldn’t agree to a deal that might include the removal of some legal protections for Big Tech companies.

The president’s choices were called «an act of staggering recklessness by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who led the House in overturning the veto on Monday. And Trump’s intransigence led to awkward politics for his ostensible allies, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who arranged the Senate’s vote on Friday.

Unlikely allies — and foes





House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., heads back to her office after opening up the House floor on Monday.





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Trump not only put McConnell and majority Republicans into the position of needing to overturn a presidential veto. But the president also came out against the position McConnell and his members took on direct cash payments to qualified Americans as coronavirus relief.

That put Trump, Pelosi and Democrats onto the same side and required McConnell to arrange an outcome in which he quashed the higher payments but also ensured the passage of the defense bill — on, as it transpired, a national holiday when many Americans are paying more attention to celebrations and hangovers than congressional byplay.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont led a bid to hold up the defense bill to force action on the relief payments, but that fizzled.



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McConnell torpedoed the higher relief payments with a measure on Thursday that chained them to issues he knew Democrats wouldn’t support, including the Big Tech legal revisions and the prospect for a commission that would sustain Trump’s baseless claims about widespread election impropriety.

The majority leader also said the support Congress already has authorized was generous enough and, in his telling, sending out more cash only would help the well-off.

«The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of the Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help, he said. «We just approved almost $1 trillion in aid a few days ago. It struck a balance between broad support for all kinds of households and a lot more targeted relief for those who need help most.

The coronavirus relief package that Trump signed on Sunday includes $600 for qualified Americans; he and Democrats pushed for that to increase to $2,000.