Following a week of late nights and contentious debates, the House of Representatives on Friday passed a sweeping annual defense spending bill filled with controversial amendments pushed by the GOP’s right flank.
The additions to the bill, which focus on hot-button social issues, set up a showdown in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where the must-pass bill needs to be reconciled.
The tally on Friday was 219-210, with four Republicans voting no and four Democrats crossing the aisle to vote yes with the majority of the GOP.
“A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. We don’t want Disneyland to train our military,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said following the bill’s passage. “We want our men and women in the military to have every defense possible and that’s what our bill does.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said it is “woefully irresponsible that extreme MAGA Republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security and taken it over and weaponized it in order to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people.”
The package sets policy across the Defense Department, as well as in aspects of the Energy Department, and this year focuses particularly on the U.S. stance toward China, Russia and other national security fronts. It includes an expected 5.2% pay raise for service members, but also strays from traditional military policy.
Among the contentious amendments that made it into the final bill: eliminating requirements for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and training, banning a health care program for service members from providing hormone treatments to transgender people and prohibiting the Secretary of Defense from paying for expenses related to abortion services for service members.
The abortion policy in particular follows weeks of controversy surrounding the issue. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has been singularly stalling Senate confirmation of military officers, including the new Commandant of the Marine Corps in protest of the policy.
Republican opposition to U.S. support for the war in Ukraine drew a number of amendments, including one to block the use of cluster munitions that Biden just sent to help Ukraine battle Russia. It was a controversial move since the devices, which can leave behind unexploded munitions endangering civilians, are banned by many other countries.
But those efforts to stop U.S. support for Ukraine, including an amendment from Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to roll back some funding, mostly failed as most lawmakers voted to continue supporting the war effort against Russia.
“I made it very clear that, obviously this is not final passage, but on final passage, my red line is money to fund and fuel a war that doesn’t make sense,” Greene said following the passage of the bill, which she voted in favor of. “Money going to Ukraine doesn’t belong in our national Department of Defense.”
During one particularly tense moment in the debate, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, spoke of how difficult it was to look across the aisle as Republicans chip away at gains for women, Black people and others in the military.
“You are setting us back,” she said during a debate over an amendment from Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., that would prevent the Defense Department from requiring participation in race-based training for hiring, promotions or retention.
Crane argued that U.S. adversaries Russia and China don’t mandate diversity measures in their military operations, and neither should the U.S. “We don’t want our military to be a social experiment,” he said. “We want the best of the best.”
When Crane used the pejorative phrase “colored people” for Black military personnel, Beatty asked for his words to be stricken from the record.
Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee, which passed the bill overwhelmingly just weeks ago, went from supporting the bill to opposing it once the various social policy amendments were added.
“That bill no longer exists. What was once an example of compromise and functioning government has become an ode to bigotry and ignorance,” eight of the Democrats on the committee wrote in a statement.
Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., who also also sits on the House Armed Services Committee was one of the four Democrats who supported the bill on Friday.
“The FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act is a work in progress, with much work ahead,” he wrote in a statement. “As negotiations continue, I look forward to supporting enhancements to the bill.”
The defense bill authorizes $874.2 billion in the coming year for the defense spending, keeping with President Joe Biden’s budget request. The funding itself is to be allocated later, when Congress handles the appropriation bills, as is the normal process.
