A sweeping Pentagon policy bill that would make significant changes to how the military deals with sexual assault has turned into a battle between two powerful and determined Democrats who have offered competing proposals.

The Pentagon announced a plan Thursday to deal with sexual assault in the ranks, including tighter control of recruiters and trainers, shored-up protections for victims and improved tracking of complaints and cases involving sexual abuse.

Among the initiatives:

President Barack Obama has no problem forcing changes at the Pentagon.
In five years, he’s drawn down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” and given a green light to allow women to fight alongside men in combat.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is planning a new round of sexual assault policies that include expanding an advocacy program for victims to all military branches and recurring inspector general audits of all closed investigations, according to an internal memo of the draft plans obtained by POLITICO.

President Obama decried military sexual assaults on Wednesday, using his first public remarks on the issue in months to make clear that, as commander-in-chief, he is committed to combating the issue.

"I want you to hear it directly from me, the commander-in-chief: it undermines what this military stands for and it undermines what the Marine Corps stands for when sexual assault occurs within our units," Obama said at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego.

"And that's why

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who helped force the military to allow gays in its ranks, is determined to upend laws governing how the armed services handle an epidemic of sexual assaults.

The tenacious 46-year-old just may prevail.

"She has spunk. She is not afraid," says former New York Gov. David Paterson, who stunned the political world in January 2009 when he appointed the little-known, two-term congresswoman to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to be secretary of state.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is fighting for her bill to curb sexual assaults in the military. Her measure would give independent military prosecutors, rather than commanders, the power to decide which cases should be tried in military court.

Military leaders fiercely oppose moving that authority outside the chain of command, arguing that commanders are responsible for the health and welfare of their soldiers. Removing their authority would undermine their ability to lead, they say.

The country’s most senior military commanders filed into a Capitol Hill hearing room in June, sat in front of TV cameras and promised to stamp out military sexual assault — a problem Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno called “a cancer.”

After a wave of sexual assault cases in the military, the Air Force is using special lawyers in a venture that top Pentagon officials hope will transform the way the armed forces treat victims.

When President Obama proclaimed that those who commit sexual assault in the military should be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,” it had an effect he did not intend: muddying legal cases across the country.