The House of Representatives on Friday narrowly advanced its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual military policy bill, complete with a litany of provisions championed by Republicans that will likely make it a nonstarter in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The roughly $895 billion bill, a 1% increase in spending over last year’s bill, passed in a 217-99 vote, with six Democrats crossing party lines to pass it, and three Republicans voting against it.
“As we confront increasingly hostile threats from Communist China, Russia, and Iran, we must provide our military with all the tools they need to defend our nation and deter our enemies,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement after the bill’s passage. “This year’s NDAA will refocus our military on its core mission of defending America and its interests across the globe, fund the deployment of the National Guard to the southwest border, expedite innovation and reduce the acquisition timeline for new weaponry, support our allies, and strengthen our nuclear posture and missile defense programs.”
"This legislation also reinforces our commitment to America’s brave men and women in uniform, and their families, by making landmark investments in their quality of life,” he added.
The bill, which abides by spending caps set in an agreement struck by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year to suspend the debt limit, includes a 19.5% pay increase for junior service members — and a 4.5% pay increase for other service members — as well as other quality of life improvements for military families, including increasing access to child care, ensuring access to health care and bigger food and housing allowances.
House Republicans added several amendments to the bill that target abortion access, transgender health care and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, setting up a collision with the Senate. The bill advanced out of committee in a nearly unanimous vote last month before the amendments were added.
While some GOP amendments were defeated in bipartisan fashion — like one from far-right Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene which sought to ban aid to Ukraine — others, like Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne’s proposal to ban the Pentagon from covering travel expenses for a service member or their family to travel out of state for reproductive health care, were adopted.
Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of using the must-pass bill, which is usually adopted with bipartisan support, to force the enactment of far-right priorities.
“Unfortunately, we are in the same position in the second year in a row where over the last several days, the Republicans, who are amongst the most extreme, far-right culture wars folks, have attached amendments to a defense bill that have no business being there,” New Mexico Democratic Rep. Melanie Stainsbury, who voted against the bill, said in a video as she left the Capitol on Friday.
“They would ban care for LGBTQ people serving in the military, they would ban reproductive care for women … they’d ban diversity initiatives in the military, and we know that all of this is really just political culture wars stuff, but it also endangers the readiness of … our military, and just the values that as Americans, we hold dear,” she added, while praising the “big wins” for service members and expressing hope that it can come back from the Senate as “a more sane version of the bill.”
Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild accused Republicans of adding “poison pills” and “using our military members and their families as political pawns.”
And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., signaled that the bill is dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled chamber due to the added provisions.
“The NDAA coming out of the House is loaded with anti-LGBTQ+, anti-choice, anti-environment, and other divisive amendments guaranteed not to pass the Senate,” Schumer wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. "We will have to work together to pass a bipartisan NDAA that honors and respects all who serve in defense of our nation.”
But House Republicans celebrated the bill’s passage, like Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, who hailed in a video after the vote that it will help lift service members out of poverty — “Some of these guys, combat guys, they’re on freaking food stamps? In America? That’s not right,” he said. — and eliminating a “lot of crazy, woke stuff.”
“The problem is now it’s going over to the Senate, and you know they’ll jack it around, who knows what it’ll come back as?” Burchett continued. “We’ll see.”
Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday advanced their version of the bill in a 22-3 vote, which goes $25 billion over the spending cap set in the debt limit deal.
One member who voted against it was the panel’s chairman, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, who largely praised the bill’s provisions, but said he opposed it “because it includes a funding increase that cannot be appropriated without breaking lawful spending caps and causing unintended harm to our military.”
“I appreciate the need for greater defense spending to ensure our national security, but I cannot support this approach,” Reed said in a statement.
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the panel’s ranking Republican member who proposed a “generational” increase in military spending last month, called Friday’s committee vote a “significant win for our national security.”
“My amendment to increase the budget topline is a down payment, and it keeps advancing the discussion,” he said in a statement. “Negotiations need a starting point, and this is not the end. I will not give up on reaching a defense level that meets the moment.”
Schumer said in a separate statement that “the higher topline in the Senate NDAA reflects the bipartisan support to ensure robust funding for our national security,” but a higher figure would require Congress to repeal the caps set by the debt limit deal or reach a new agreement on a budget.