Todd Jacobson
WC Monitor
9/19/2014

With work on the Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Authorization Act pushed back until after the November Congressional elections, House and Senate Armed Services Committee members began meeting this week for “pre-conference” talks, but Senate authorizers were absent when House members of the Strategic Forces subcommittee gather for discussions. According to Congressional aides, Senate authorizers didn’t participate in the Strategic Forces “pre-conference” talks Sept. 18 because of a scheduling conflict. House Armed Services Committee spokesman John Noonan declined to comment on the talks, and the office of Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), the chairman of the Senate Strategic Forces Subcommittee, did not respond to a request for comment.

The House passed its version of the FY 2015 NDAA this summer, but the Senate hasn’t acted despite hope that the chamber could take up the bill this month. That leaves the lame duck period after the elections for lawmakers to conference on the bill, and this week’s “pre-conference” talks were designed as a way to engage lawmakers as the conference process begins. The talks are just preliminary, aides said, and the idea is not to have members commit to anything in particular. “Ideally you want to have everyone but either way it’s an opportunity for members to participate and be engaged and focus on issues that are important to them,” one Congressional aide told WC Monitor.

The Strategic Forces talks are expected to draw House Republicans and Democrats, but without Senators there, it’s unclear how valuable the discussions will be. Congressional aides said the idea for the talks germinated with House members, and any effort to get them engaged early would prove valuable during formal conference discussions.