US Senate Passes $901 Billion Defense Bill Despite Opposition, Requires Video of Venezuela Boat Strikes

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to the annual National Defense Authorisation Act, a sweeping military policy bill that would authorise $901 billion for defense programmes and require Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers with video of strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters near Venezuela.

The measure, which includes a 3.8% pay raise for troops, cleared the Senate 77–20 as lawmakers prepared to leave Washington for a holiday break. Two Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee — and 18 Democrats voted against the bill, reported news agency AP.

The White House has said the bill aligns with President Donald Trump’s national security priorities. But the more than 3,000-page legislation also highlights areas of tension between Congress and the Pentagon as the administration shifts attention away from European security and toward Central and South America.

The bill seeks to curb several recent Pentagon moves. It demands additional information about boat strikes in the Caribbean, requires the United States to maintain current troop levels in Europe, and authorises some military assistance to Ukraine.

The bill, however, faced objections from both Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee. That's because the legislation allows military aircraft to obtain a waiver to operate without broadcasting their precise location, as an Army helicopter had done before a midair collision with an airliner in Washington, D.C. in January that killed 67 people.

"The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29 crash that claimed 67 lives,” Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a news conference this week.

Cruz said he was seeking a vote on bipartisan legislation in the next month that would require military aircraft to use a precise location sharing tool and improve coordination between commercial and military aircraft in busy areas.

Republicans and Democrats agreed to language in the defense bill that threatened to withhold a quarter of Hegseth's travel budget until he provided unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing them, to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.

The committees are investigating a Sept. 2 strike which was the first of the campaign, that killed two people who had survived an initial attack on their boat. The Navy admiral who ordered the “double-tap” strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, also appeared before the committees shortly before the vote on Wednesday in a classified briefing that also included video of the strike in question.

Several Republican senators emerged from the meeting backing Hegseth and his decision not to release the video publicly, but other GOP lawmakers stayed silent on their opinion of the strike.

Democrats are calling for part of the video to be released publicly and for every member of Congress to have access to the full footage.

(with inputs from AP/PTI)