News Alert: Senate overwhelmingly passes $619 billion defense policy bill

The fiscal year 2017 defense policy bill is heading to President Obama's desk after the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill on Thursday.

The Senate easily passed the National Defense Authorization Act, in a 92-7 vote, which would authorize $618.7 billion in the military spending in the current fiscal year. That includes $67.8 billion in an overseas contingency operations account meant to pay for wartime operations abroad.

That top line is $3.2 billion more than what the president asked for in fiscal year 2017, which could be an issue for the White House since there is no comparable increase in spending on non-defense. A boost in defense spending without spending more on non-defense was what prompted President Obama's veto of the defense policy bill in 2016.

But Democrats in the House and Senate did not see the funding issue as enough of a reason to not support the bill this year. The House passed it last week by a 375-34 vote, more than enough to override a presidential veto if needed.

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