All are likely to meet fierce debate from Democrats, and the most partisan measures will face tremendous hurtles 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.
If any of this drama sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The House a year ago narrowly passed an NDAA saddled with similar provisions, shattering a decades-long tradition of bipartisanship around the annual bill, which sets Pentagon policy and guides spending for the year ahead.
“Last year, House Republicans loaded up the NDAA like it was a MAGA wish list,” Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) said this week, as the Rules Committee met to consider which of the more than 1,350 proposed amendments it would allow members to debate on the House floor. “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.”
The Rules Committee, which under normal House procedures sets the guidelines for voting on legislation, Tuesday narrowed the amendment list to 350, which lawmakers began to debate Wednesday. The process is expected to stretch late into Thursday, with a vote on the defense bill likely to occur Friday.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, which drafted the bill, say the legislation 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,” Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), the committee’s chairman, said Wednesday on the House floor. “This bill goes a long way toward fixing these things.”
The NDAA, along with annual government appropriations bills, remains one of the few pieces of legislation routinely passed by an otherwise deeply partisan and chronically deadlocked Congress. 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.
But while the 1,022-page bill contains some items opposed by Democrats — such as restrictions on the Defense Department’s ability to promote diversity in its ranks or counter climate change — the most polarizing ideological battles will occur over coming days, as far-right members argue for what Democrats have branded “poison pill” amendments along with others that have little or nothing to do with U.S. national defense.
Most of the far-right’s wish list never made it into the final version of last year’s NDAA, which President Biden signed into law in December.
But the radically different House and Senate bills made for a tense, lengthy negotiation process — 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.
Members of the Armed Services Committee have urged their colleagues to avoid such a production this year, but in a deeply divisive election year, that appears unlikely.
“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,” Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), said the Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat. “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 that “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.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has an even slimmer majority this year — 218 Republicans to Democrats’ 213 — than his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), had last summer, making passage of a bill along partisan lines all the more challenging.
Rogers, the committee chair, implored colleagues to “focus on amendments to advance the security of our nation and the needs of our service members.”
