A compromise $900 billion defense bill does not contain any restrictions on paying for military members’ travel to get an abortion, nor does the bill block coverage of transition surgeries for transgenders and hormone treatments.
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The bill also extends controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for four months. Republican-backed proposals to rein in diversity efforts, teach critical race theory, and institute a salary cap and hiring freeze for the diversity workforce were all included in the final bill.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) believes the GOP gave away too much.
“No member of the NDAA conference had any influence on this process. It was done in secret meetings with no input from conferees,” she tweeted.
“Now, we’re supposed to just grin and take it with no say in the final bill.”
Lawmakers who serve on both chambers’ Armed Services committees on Wednesday night released compromise text for the annual National Defense Authorization Act. This year’s NDAA, which lays out top policy priorities for the Pentagon, calls for a 5.2% pay raise for service members and military training assistance to Taiwan to help the island defend itself against a possible invasion by China.
The text, called a conference report, came after House and Senate negotiators spent the past week hammering out differences between the NDAA bills their chambers passed earlier this year, a process that prompted House lawmakers to drop several controversial social-policy measures that were unlikely to get approval from President Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
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The bill will be introduced in the House under a suspension of the rules, meaning it will need a two-thirds majority to become law. At this point, it will be a close vote, but barring surprises, it should pass.
“Our nation faces unprecedented threats from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. It is vital that we act now to protect our national security,” the four leaders of the Armed Services committees — Sens. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) — said in a statement Thursday.
“Through months of hard-fought and productive negotiations, we have crafted a bipartisan and bicameral conference report that strengthens our national security and supports our servicemembers,” they said.
It appears that Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) crusade to put a hold on all military promotions until the Pentagon altered its policy on paying for abortion travel went for naught. The policy remains, and Tuberville has lifted his hold on promotions except for generals of four-star rank.
Significantly, there is bipartisan opposition to extending the foreign surveillance law, which is to be sunset after the first of the year.
The bill also extends until mid-April the government’s foreign surveillance powers, which are due to lapse at the end of this year. The decision to essentially table until the spring what is expected to be a fierce security and privacy debate over those powers could lead some lawmakers to vote against the overall defense legislation. More than 50 House lawmakers from both parties recently wrote to congressional leadership saying they opposed any effort to temporarily extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by linking it to the must-pass annual defense bill.
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The compromise stripped out most of the social justice and culture war elements to give Biden a fairly clean bill to sign. But first, it has to pass the House. Given that it contains the first pay raise for the troops in several years and funds several popular weapons systems, even without the abortion and transgender amendments, the bill has a good chance of passing.