Joe Donnelly continues bucking Democrats on military bills

Sen. Joe Donnelly was faced Wednesday with voting for a military spending bill he helped write, or backing President Barack Obama's objections.

The Indiana Democrat voted for the bill.

"I'm disappointed to hear the president plans to veto the bill," Donnelly told Indiana reporters shortly before the Senate voted 70-27 to approve the annual bill setting military policy.

Although that's enough votes to override a veto, the House vote of 270 to 156 last week fell short of the two-thirds majority needed.

The White House opposes the bill because it designates some routine military spending as emergency war expenses to get around spending caps imposed by a 2011 budget deal.

Donnelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there were better ways to write the bill.

"But this is the way it was done and this is the only bill we have to vote on," he said. "And so I want to make sure we can move forward with the defense bill."

The bill includes language Donnelly pushed to improve mental health care for service members and their families.

The bill sets military policy, including spending parameters. But the funding itself comes in the annual spending bills that lawmakers were supposed to approve by the end of September.

After Congress failed to send the bills to the president, lawmakers passed a short-term funding measure last month to keep the government operating until Dec. 11.

Senate Democrats have been using the power of the filibuster to block votes on spending bills until Republicans agree to renegotiate budget caps put in place by the 2011 bipartisan agreement to raise the federal debt limit.

Donnelly was the only Senate Democrat to vote last week to call up for debate the annual spending bill for military construction and veterans' issues.

He was also the only Senate Democrat to vote in July to consider the military spending bill.

Donnelly said he understands the president's concern that "we have to adequately fund both defense and non-defense" programs, and is hopeful an agreement can be worked out to do that.

But in a time of increasingly complex global challenges, Donnelly said, "we need to set a clear policy with the Department of Defense to move forward and protect our national security and take care of our men and women in uniform."

Email Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.