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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Democrat-led House of Representatives voted Monday to override President Donald Trump’s veto on a $ 740 billion defense policy bill, a rebuke that underscored divisions. in the Republican Party during Trump’s final weeks in office.
The 322-87 House vote, in which 109 Republicans joined Democrats to override Trump’s veto, leaves the fate of the bill to the Republican-led Senate, where a final vote is expected this week. If the Senate seconds the House action, the bill becomes law. It would be the first override of the Trump presidency veto.
Trump, who is angry that some Republicans have acknowledged his defeat to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov.3 election, vetoed the defense bill last Wednesday. Biden will be sworn in as president on January 20.
Trump said he blocked the legislation because he wanted it to revoke liability protections for social media companies not related to national security, and he opposed a provision to rename military bases after generals who fought for the Pro-slavery confederation during the Civil War.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed what she described as “an overwhelming bipartisan vote” to overturn Trump’s rejection of the bill and predicted that the legislation would become law despite the “dangerous sabotage efforts “by the president.
“The president must end his 11th-hour campaign of chaos and stop using his final moments in office to obstruct bipartisan and bicameral action to protect our military and defend our security,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Another top Democrat, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, said he believes the Senate will join the House in rejecting Trump’s veto.
Twenty Democrats, including the prominent progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, opposed the override.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, urged Republicans before the vote not to side with the president.
“The world is watching what we do,” the Texas Republican said. “I would just ask that, as members vote, they put the best interests of the country first. There is no other consideration that should matter.”
The legislation, which addresses a number of defense policy issues and includes a salary increase for US troops, has been passed by Congress every year since 1961.
The bill had previously been approved by both houses of Congress with margins greater than the two-thirds majorities needed to override the president’s veto. But Trump vetoed it anyway, and the bill returned to Congress for possible repeal.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Aurora Ellis)
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