The Pentagon this week is once again at the center of America’s culture wars, as the Republican-led House considers adding divisive provisions from its far-right members to its version of the annual defense policy bill.
Far-right lawmakers have proposed amendments to the $895.3 billion legislation that would restrict service members’ access to reproductive health care and certain diversity protections. They also are seeking to block future U.S. assistance to Ukraine and Palestinian civilians, expand the military’s presence along the Mexico border, and roll back environmental protections sought by the Biden administration.
The House approved some of those proposals Wednesday, despite opposition from Democrats. More debate is expected Thursday, and the most partisan measures will face tremendous hurdles to final passage as the House will have to reconcile its legislation with whatever version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passes the Democratic-led Senate this summer.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) commands only a slim majority — 218 Republicans to Democrats’ 213 — and had to rely on Democrats this year to pass an emergency $95 billion funding package to aid Ukraine, Israel and other allies over objections from the GOP’s far-right flank. But Johnson has given no indication he will aim for a similar bipartisanship on the NDAA, leaving vulnerable Republicans from swing districts with tough decisions to make on whether to support the most hard-line proposals — on issues like abortion — ahead of this year’s elections.
If any of this drama sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The House voted along partisan lines a year ago, narrowly passing an NDAA saddled with ideological provisions and shattering a decades-long tradition of bipartisanship around the annual bill, which sets Pentagon policy and guides spending for the year ahead. Most were later stripped from the bill when the House and Senate versions were merged.
“Last year, House Republicans loaded up the NDAA like it was a MAGA wish list,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said this week. “The NDAA should represent a good-faith attempt to keep America safe. If what happened last year happens again … Republicans will be looking at a very steep uphill battle to get this bill across the finish line.”
Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which drafted the defense policy bill, implored colleagues to “focus on amendments to advance the security of our nation and the needs of our service members.”
House lawmakers on Wednesday began debating some 350 proposed amendments to the bill — a list narrowed by the Rules Committee from more than 1,350 that were submitted. The process is expected to stretch into Thursday, with a vote on the defense bill likely to occur Friday.
Already, Republicans managed to secure the addition of several contentious amendments, including a measure introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, to prohibit funds from being used in support of President Biden’s climate agenda. Others, led by Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.), would bar U.S. defense funding for building or rebuilding in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip when the war between Israel and Hamas ends, and for transporting Palestinian refugees to the United States.
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Liberal Democrats have been deeply critical of the Biden administration’s ongoing provision of billions of dollars in weapons to Israel amid a crippling eight-month war that has so far destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure and killed more than 37,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The administration is pushing for a cease-fire, appealing to regional partners to lay the groundwork for postwar governance in Gaza, and it has sought ways to move humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians amid the fighting.
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), characterized Mast and Arrington’s amendments as counterproductive to U.S. and Israeli interests, and called the effort to block Palestinian refugees “biased and somewhat bigoted.”
A proposal to curtail U.S. funding for NATO, put forward by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and an effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to prohibit government spending on electric vehicles and related infrastructure were voted down Wednesday.
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Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee said the legislation approved by their panel authorizes broad — and badly needed — improvements to service members’ pay and benefits, including a 19.5 percent raise for junior enlisted personnel, and expanded child-care access, plus improvements to dilapidated military housing and other infrastructure around the world.
“No service members should have to live in squalid conditions. No military family should have to rely on food stamps to feed their children … [or] have to wait weeks to see a doctor or mental health specialist. But that’s exactly what many of our service members are experiencing,” Rogers said Wednesday on the House floor. “This bill goes a long way toward fixing these things.”
The NDAA remains one of the few pieces of legislation routinely passed by an otherwise deeply partisan and chronically deadlocked Congress.
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In keeping with previous years, this bill authorizes expanded development and procurement of weapons and technology to maintain the United States’ decisive edge in an increasingly tense strategic competition with China. It also approves continued — and in some cases, expanded — support for key American partners such as Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, and seeks to bolster the Pentagon’s role in U.S. border security.
Members of the Armed Services Committee from both parties acknowledged Wednesday that the 1,022-page bill “isn’t perfect,” but they stressed that it was the product of months of bipartisan work.
The radically different House and Senate bills that emerged following the amendments process last year made for a tense, lengthy negotiation — and ultimately delivered an embarrassing defeat to House Republicans when they were forced to accept a final bill largely stripped of the most contentious provisions.
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Members of the Armed Services Committee urged their colleagues to avoid such a production this year, but that appears unlikely in a deeply divisive election year.
“I am confident that by the time we get to the end of the process, as we always do, we will have once again a bipartisan product,” Smith said earlier in the week. “Let’s just get there earlier this time, save ourselves the aggravation. It’s where we’re going to wind up anyways, so why don’t we just go ahead and do it?”
Smith said, “Any effort to go after reproductive health care, any effort to go after the rights of the LGBTQ community, are going to be problems, as is any effort to block the efforts of DOD to have a truly inclusive military.” Lawmakers are expected to debate such far-right proposals Thursday.
Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
