While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was sabotaging coronavirus relief, the Congress was supposed to be going along with a regular procedure and a normal legislative process in passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the 60th year in a row, even under a veto threat from Donald Trump. Then Sen. Rand Paul happened, because he's constitutionally incapable of not making a bad situation 100 times worse. Thanks, Kentucky, for those two.
Paul is delaying passage of the NDAA, filibustering it over a provision that he says would prevent Trump from drawing down forces in Afghanistan. That's what he says his problem is, anyway. "That amendment alone is enough to make me object to it, as well as the amount of spending," he said. He also said he would drop his objection and let the Senate take their vote quickly if they would push the final vote back to Monday. What Paul is really doing, whether purposefully or not, is threatening a short government shutdown this weekend. He needs to relent before midnight Friday in order for the short-term government funding bill the House sent over Wednesday to be passed. Meanwhile the Senate, being the Senate and allergic to working on Fridays, just wants to get the hell out of town for the weekend and isn't sure how to get around to all the work they need to do.
"I don't know the answer to that but I'm hopeful that it's just a short-term thing. We'll probably be here tomorrow. But I don't know how much longer. I can't imagine anybody wants [a shutdown]," Sen. John Cornyn told Politico. Which makes you wonder if Cornyn actually knows Paul. "For the information of all senators, we should expect the potential for a late night tonight and the possibility of votes tomorrow," McConnell told members Thursday.
Meanwhile, the tough talk from Republicans about standing up to Trump and overriding his veto of the NDAA is starting to crumble, with spineless Republicans trying to have it both ways. Seriously, here's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pretzeling himself, "formally" announcing "Tuesday evening that he was for the annual Pentagon policy bill, before he will turn against the measure that provides pay raises for troops and a list of critical new provisions with overwhelming bipartisan support." He wants that critical raise of the troops and all the new provisions, but he doesn't want Trump to be mean to him, so he voted for the bill but is going to vote against the bill when it comes back for a veto override.
"My point has always been, when I became a leader, I would not vote against the president's veto. I will hold up the president's veto," McCarthy told reporters. "We've always worked together to make bills better." That pits him against the Republican Senate. "It's the most important bill of the year. We're talking about the equipment we're gonna have, we're talking about the number of F-35s, we're talking about, anyway, it's all the things that our kids could get," Sen. James M. Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. So that's fun.