Following the announcement, the Senate voted 84-15 to hasten the beginning of debate on the defense bill earlier than adjourning Wednesday night. Sixty votes have been required for the bill to clear its first procedural hurdle.
The Schumer-led U.S. Innovation and Competition Act handed within the Senate with bipartisan majorities in June, however has stalled within the House, the place committee chairs have sought to vary the legislation however have made little progress in recent months.
And with the legislative calendar thinning, Schumer was pushing to connect the measure to the defense coverage legislation in a last-ditch bid to ship it to President Joe Biden’s desk earlier than yr’s finish — or on the very least, jump-start the negotiations.
Later Wednesday, Schumer and Pelosi agreed to resolve the 2 chambers’ variations by a convention committee, successfully de-linking the China bill and the defense legislation.
The pact means the Senate is now clear to vote to advance debate on the defense bill as early as Wednesday night.
The disagreements threatened to additional stall Senate motion on the defense bill, which has handed Congress annually for the final six many years.
“It’s certainly a little mystifying why the House doesn’t see the same urgency we do on building a coherent China policy,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) mentioned earlier Wednesday. “I think we’ve been waiting all year for the House to put together a process that at least creates a version of USICA that could get us to [a conference committee]. My feeling is some of us are kind of done waiting.”
The Senate spent a lot of Wednesday negotiating the contours of the defense coverage bill. Schumer’s push to incorporate the USICA in a deliberate supervisor’s package deal of bipartisan and largely uncontroversial amendments pressured senators to shelve the procedural vote to advance the defense bill, which was initially set for Wednesday morning.
“Trying to get together what’s in that package up front is the key,” Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) mentioned of the delay.
In their joint assertion, Schumer and Pelosi blamed Senate Republicans, saying that after they “made it clear they would block the inclusion of USICA on the NDAA, we have decided that the best way to get an agreement will be through the conference process.”
The USICA would authorize funding for scientific analysis and growth as a approach to counter China’s technological developments, and it additionally outlines new spending to spice up the U.S. semiconductor business, which has lagged amid the latest provide chain backlog. The bill, costing a complete of $250 billion, is the fruits of Schumer’s longtime curiosity in confronting an more and more aggressive Beijing.
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the highest Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, mentioned earlier Wednesday that GOP senators have been ready to vote in opposition to the procedural movement on the defense bill if Schumer tried so as to add the China legislation with out holding a separate vote on it.
“We’re not ready for a motion to proceed until we know what we’re proceeding to,” Inhofe advised reporters. “It’s just an unnecessary obstacle. … That’s what’s holding it up now. It’s Schumer doing something unprecedented in as long as I can remember.”
The rift over the China bill was one more supply of pressure between the House and Senate. And Democrats are feeling rising stress to move a bunch of priorities earlier than the top of the yr — together with Biden’s social spending bill — with little time left and no margin for error.
Top House Democrats — who haven’t but handed their very own complete model of the China bill — had expressed reservations about being pressured to swallow the Senate legislation in its entirety as a part of the annual defense legislation.
“The House has to have a voice,” House Foreign Affairs Chair Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) mentioned in a quick interview Wednesday. “And the best way to have a voice is to pass something here. … And hopefully [Schumer will] see that also and push back, and understand we’re not going to allow something to be just jammed down our throats.”
In a letter to colleagues this week, Schumer wrote that there was broad bipartisan help within the Senate for together with the legislation within the defense coverage bill, which he mentioned would allow negotiations with the House “to be completed alongside [the defense policy bill] before the end of the year.”
Senators who backed the China package deal this summer time have been largely supportive of Schumer’s push to connect it to the defense bill, regardless of House Democrats’ reluctance — particularly given the dwindling variety of legislative days left on the calendar.
House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) was additionally on board with together with the China bill within the broader defense measure, however he warned that “a lot of logistics and a lot of details” wanted to be labored out amongst his fellow committee chairs for the gambit to succeed.
“I think at this point, given all of the complications and all of the difficulties, it was fair to say that USICA is going to need to hitch a ride on something, and the logical thing at the moment for it to hitch a ride on is the NDAA. And I don’t have a problem with that,” Smith mentioned.
For Smith, who publicly feuded with Schumer over the Senate’s inaction on the defense bill, the dust-up is proof that the higher chamber ought to’ve acted weeks, if not months, in the past.
“I’ve told folks that if you want to play a drinking game with me, for the next month … drink every time I say, ‘That’s why we should’ve done this sooner,’” Smith mentioned.
“And you can start right now,” he mentioned. “We should’ve done this sooner.”
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
