The U.S. Capitol building is seen on June 30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Carlos Bongioanni/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — The annual defense policy bill that provides salary increases for troops and outlines priorities for the Pentagon has passed both chambers of Congress in a largely bipartisan way for more than 60 years.
This year, the Senate and House are looking at a wide gulf between their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act with a culture war over sensitive social issues at the center.
The Republican-led House wants to strip abortion access, transgender care and diversity initiatives from the Pentagon while the Democrat-led Senate is fighting to keep them. The rift puts the fate of the legislation in doubt as lawmakers head into negotiations to iron out a final agreement to send to the White House.
“We have a very divided country,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “We have a divided Congress.”
The Senate approved its draft of the legislation with wide bipartisan consensus Thursday, voting 86-11 after two weeks of debate on the $886 billion defense bill. The House rammed through its bill earlier in June in a partisan 219-210 vote that only four Democrats supported.
Democrats decried the conservative legislation as an attack on women, transgender people and minorities that will only exacerbate the military’s recruiting crisis. Republicans said they are attempting to stamp out frivolous liberal ideology at the Pentagon that has distracted the armed forces from their warfighting mission.
“As a 26-year naval aviator, I know our armed forces exist to fight and win wars in defense of America, not to further political ideologies or social experiments,” said Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Fla. “The [House] NDAA... authorizes the resources and programs to do just that – nothing more, nothing less.”
Abortion access is perhaps the largest sticking point between the two sides as hard-right Republicans seek to undo a Defense Department policy enacted in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The controversial policy provides service members with time off and reimbursement for travel expenses if they need to travel out of state for abortions or other reproductive health care services.
Republicans have argued the policy violates a federal law that prohibits the government from funding abortions. The loudest critic of the policy on Capitol Hill is Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who said he will continue to block the Senate’s normally routine process for confirming senior military officers until the policy is scrapped. His monthslong hold has stalled the promotion of at least 273 nominees.
An amendment to rescind the Pentagon’s policy was successfully adopted on the House floor but no such amendment was offered during debate over the defense bill in the Senate. Schumer told reporters that he gave Tuberville an opportunity to put a similar amendment up for a vote but Tuberville refused.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday that the committee had voted on a proposal to end the Pentagon policy and shot it down. Tuberville is a member of the panel.
“We’re going into conference with the position that the Senate basically has concluded that the policy of the Department of Defense is both legal and one that should be retained and we’re going to stick to that position and I think we will prevail,” Reed said.
The staff of the congressional Armed Services committees will begin reconciling differences between the bills during the August recess. Lawmakers from both chambers will then be named to a joint conference committee to draft a compromise bill that could pass both chambers.
Negotiations will also need to address a House amendment that ends health coverage of transition surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops. The Senate did not address the issue in its bill. Schumer said Republicans in the upper chamber did not offer any “extreme amendments because they want to get things done.”
There will likely be more room for compromise on diversity issues, where Republicans succeeded in the Senate in curbing the Pentagon’s efforts to make the military more equitable and inclusive. The upper chamber’s bill imposes salary caps and a hiring freeze on Pentagon positions dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The House’s legislation shutters the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion offices entirely and eliminates all of their personnel. The White House said President Joe Biden would veto the House bill and warned the Senate bill would undermine efforts to promote a diverse workforce.
The House and Senate are also set to clash over the ramifications of the military’s now-defunct coronavirus vaccine mandate, which pushed more than 8,000 troops who failed to comply out of the service. The House adopted amendments that would ease their path to reenlistment while the Senate voted down a similar proposal that would have also provided ousted service members with back pay.
Reed, a strong opponent of readmitting troops who defied lawful orders, said the House focused more on sending a “message” than meeting the needs of service members. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement that the Senate's bipartisan legislation accurately reflected the nation’s national security priorities.
“I will keep pushing to keep it that way as this bill goes to conference with our colleagues in the House,” he said.
shkolnikova.svetlana@stripes.com
Twitter: @svetashko
