High-ranking Dem: Senate could take up defense bill Tuesday

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) expects the full Senate to take up a joint fiscal year 2015 defense policy bill some time Tuesday. 

“I think it’s going to happen tomorrow. I think it’s going to come up tomorrow, maybe late tomorrow,” Levin, the retiring chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday night. 

{mosads}The House on Thursday easily passed the $585 billion defense authorization bill to equip the Defense Department with funding and programs for fiscal year 2015. 

Levin said he expects Senate leaders to “lay it down tomorrow and then it will be followed through with it.” 

Since the proposed measure was not open to amendments, the bill should arrive from the House in a fashion that could allow it to get through the Senate with only one debate-limiting cloture motion and an accompanying 30 hours of debate. 

An objection would delay a full Senate vote until Thursday. 

Levin said he was unsure if any of his colleagues would object to the bill. 

“I just don’t know. No one’s told me but that doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I wouldn’t necessarily be told I work through the usual rules here which are they can object if they want to.” 

Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.), the panel’s top Republican, told reporters he expects there to be an objection. 

“Yeah, I think there will be some,” he said, declining to give specific names. 

Last week Inhofe predicted Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a major defecit hawk, would protest the policy blueprint. 

“We’ve always differed on military stuff. We love each other and all that, he’s my brother, but he’s wrong,” he joked. “And he has every right to be wrong.”