Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The Senate passed a $768 billion defense policy bill on a rare bipartisan basis Wednesday, sending the bill to President Joe Biden with $25 billion more than he requested.
The bill, which has been routinely passed for 60 years, originally ran into a stumbling block when the Senate could not pass its own version of the bill. The Senate was squabbling over policies dealing with China and Russia at the time.
That left bipartisan members of the House and Senate Armed Services committee to negotiate a compromise that could pass both chambers, which lead to the budget increase.
"Our nation faces an enormous range of security challenges," Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, according to the New York Times. "To that end, this bill makes great progress.
"It addresses a broad range of pressing issues from the strategic competition with China and Russia, to disruptive technologies like hypersonics, A.I. and quantum computing, to modernizing our ships, aircraft and vehicles."
The Biden administration had asked Congress to keep defense spending flat, but that idea was rejected by the majority to Democrats and Republicans in a rare vote that crossed party lines in both chambers.
The bill broke new ground in some areas, including provisions to move the prosecutions of sexual assault and related crimes involving military personnel outside their chain of command, and instructions to establish an independent commission that will investigate the legacy and errors made during the war in Afghanistan, the longest in United States' history.
