The House, in a decisive vote Thursday, passed the annual defense policy bill and delivered a bipartisan rebuke to its most conservative members who had sought to infuse the legislation with a wishlist of provisions targeting Pentagon policies on abortion access, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights.
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The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved by a vote of 310-118, having passed the Senate with overwhelming approval on Wednesday night. It now proceeds to President Biden, who is expected to sign the legislation into law.
The 3,000-plus-page legislation, a product of months of negotiations, directs how federal dollars can be spent on defense-related programs and initiatives. It authorizes expanded military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe — ongoing efforts aimed at countering China and Russia, respectively — and structural updates at bases and barracks. The legislation includes a pay raise for service members, the procurement of new weapons and missile-defense systems, and numerous other national security imperatives.
Notably, it also extends the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the vehicle through which the Biden administration has helped support Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, through fiscal 2027. However, the bulk of any future Ukraine aid — part of Biden’s emergency national security funding request — remains mired in partisan battles and appears unlikely to pass Congress this year, if at all.
Over the summer, the typically bipartisan NDAA became ground zero in the nation’s increasingly polarized culture wars, as hard-right Republicans leveraged the GOP’s fragile House majority to attach various provisions aimed at dismantling what they called the military’s “woke” policies on abortion, race and gender-affirming health care.
The Senate subsequently passed a very different NDAA, largely devoid of such provisions, which led some congressional staff and analysts to wonder whether Congress would be able to reconcile the two bills or, for the first time in decades, fail to pass what has long been deemed a must-pass piece of legislation.
The compromise bill approved Thursday is void of nearly all of the hard right’s culture-war provisions — including a measure that would have barred the Defense Department from reimbursing the travel costs of U.S. service members who travel out of state to obtain an abortion. And several members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus took to the House floor Thursday morning to assail the bill as a betrayal of conservative values.
“A vote for this bill is a perpetuation of the woke policies undermining our military, bringing down the morale driving down recruiting and now undermining the civil liberties of the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus said on the House floor Thursday.
“With this NDAA conference report you almost feel like a parent who’s sent a child off to summer camp, and they’ve come back a monster,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.). “That’s what we’ve done. This bill came back in far worse shape.”
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Republican and Democratic leaders on the House Armed Services Committee sought to push back against that claim, and urged Republicans to embrace the bill as a vital measure to protect America’s national security.
“I’ll be the first to admit, we didn’t get all the priorities we wanted. But you what? The Senate is pretty disappointed they didn’t get the priorities they wanted either,” Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the armed services committee, told his colleagues from the floor. “It takes a compromise to move legislation in a divided government.” Plus, he insisted, the bill still contains a number of Republican victories. “It goes a long way toward ending woke policies being forced on our service members by left wing bureaucrats … This bill is a compromise but it’s a good compromise,” he said.
One Republican Senate aide said Wednesday that House hard-liners’ insistence on ramming through a deeply conservative House version of the NDAA along party lines had dealt a blow to Republicans leverage in the negotiations over the final legislation, despite Republicans’ control of the House.
Republicans had to fight “tooth and nail” even to retain a provision, initially proposed by the Biden administration, allowing the Defense Department to assist the Department of Homeland Security on the U.S.-Mexico border, the aide said.
On Thursday, Rogers said he was “reminding” his colleagues that a ‘No’ vote would put them on record rejecting several Republican victories, along with the NDAA’s expansion of various other national security initiatives to counter China and Russia, stand with Israel, and improve the livelihoods of service members.
“My friends, this is the right bill at the right time. We need it urgently to deter catastrophic conflict,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who chairs the tactical air and land forces subcommittee of the armed services committee, said on the floor.
The compromise NDAA prohibits “the display of any unapproved flags, such as the LGBTQ Pride flag at military installations,” according to a summary of the bill released by the Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee, championing the conservative wins that remained intact. And it “reiterates” that no Defense Department money is to be spent on drag shows or other events involving drag queens, the summary says.
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The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved by a vote of 310-118, having passed the Senate with overwhelming approval on Wednesday night. It now proceeds to President Biden, who is expected to sign the legislation into law.
The 3,000-plus-page legislation, a product of months of negotiations, directs how federal dollars can be spent on defense-related programs and initiatives. It authorizes expanded military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe — ongoing efforts aimed at countering China and Russia, respectively — and structural updates at bases and barracks. The legislation includes a pay raise for service members, the procurement of new weapons and missile-defense systems, and numerous other national security imperatives.
Notably, it also extends the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the vehicle through which the Biden administration has helped support Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, through fiscal 2027. However, the bulk of any future Ukraine aid — part of Biden’s emergency national security funding request — remains mired in partisan battles and appears unlikely to pass Congress this year, if at all.
Over the summer, the typically bipartisan NDAA became ground zero in the nation’s increasingly polarized culture wars, as hard-right Republicans leveraged the GOP’s fragile House majority to attach various provisions aimed at dismantling what they called the military’s “woke” policies on abortion, race and gender-affirming health care.
The Senate subsequently passed a very different NDAA, largely devoid of such provisions, which led some congressional staff and analysts to wonder whether Congress would be able to reconcile the two bills or, for the first time in decades, fail to pass what has long been deemed a must-pass piece of legislation.
The compromise bill approved Thursday is void of nearly all of the hard right’s culture-war provisions — including a measure that would have barred the Defense Department from reimbursing the travel costs of U.S. service members who travel out of state to obtain an abortion. And several members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus took to the House floor Thursday morning to assail the bill as a betrayal of conservative values.
“A vote for this bill is a perpetuation of the woke policies undermining our military, bringing down the morale driving down recruiting and now undermining the civil liberties of the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus said on the House floor Thursday.
“With this NDAA conference report you almost feel like a parent who’s sent a child off to summer camp, and they’ve come back a monster,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.). “That’s what we’ve done. This bill came back in far worse shape.”
ADVERTISING
Republican and Democratic leaders on the House Armed Services Committee sought to push back against that claim, and urged Republicans to embrace the bill as a vital measure to protect America’s national security.
“I’ll be the first to admit, we didn’t get all the priorities we wanted. But you what? The Senate is pretty disappointed they didn’t get the priorities they wanted either,” Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the armed services committee, told his colleagues from the floor. “It takes a compromise to move legislation in a divided government.” Plus, he insisted, the bill still contains a number of Republican victories. “It goes a long way toward ending woke policies being forced on our service members by left wing bureaucrats … This bill is a compromise but it’s a good compromise,” he said.
One Republican Senate aide said Wednesday that House hard-liners’ insistence on ramming through a deeply conservative House version of the NDAA along party lines had dealt a blow to Republicans leverage in the negotiations over the final legislation, despite Republicans’ control of the House.
Republicans had to fight “tooth and nail” even to retain a provision, initially proposed by the Biden administration, allowing the Defense Department to assist the Department of Homeland Security on the U.S.-Mexico border, the aide said.
On Thursday, Rogers said he was “reminding” his colleagues that a ‘No’ vote would put them on record rejecting several Republican victories, along with the NDAA’s expansion of various other national security initiatives to counter China and Russia, stand with Israel, and improve the livelihoods of service members.
“My friends, this is the right bill at the right time. We need it urgently to deter catastrophic conflict,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who chairs the tactical air and land forces subcommittee of the armed services committee, said on the floor.
The compromise NDAA prohibits “the display of any unapproved flags, such as the LGBTQ Pride flag at military installations,” according to a summary of the bill released by the Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee, championing the conservative wins that remained intact. And it “reiterates” that no Defense Department money is to be spent on drag shows or other events involving drag queens, the summary says.
