No surprises among Senate conferees for Defense bill

Every member of the Senate Armed Services Committee will be a conferee for the conference committee on the defense authorization bill, which was passed in the Senate late Thursday.

There were no surprises among the Senate’s 26 conferees, who were announced just after the bill passed. The House has yet to say who will sit on the conference committee, a House Armed Services spokesman said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, reached a compromise Thursday with Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) over how the military detains terror suspects, an issue that has sparked heated debate on the bill and has drawn a White House veto threat.

While Feinstein won’t be in the conference committee, she said on the floor Thursday that Levin and ranking member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had assured her that the compromise language would remain in the final bill that comes out of the conference committee.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who tried unsuccessfully to strip the detainee language from the Senate bill, said in a statement Thursday that he will “continue to fight for a consensus” on detainees in conference.

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