WASHINGTON (AP) — The House of Representatives passed an $895 billion measure Wednesday that would allow a 1% augment in defense spending this fiscal year and give about half of military members a double-digit pay raise.
The bill is traditionally strongly bipartisan, but some Democratic lawmakers opposed including a ban on transgender medical treatments for military children if such treatment could result in sterilization.
The bill passed the House by a vote of 281-140 and will next move to the Senate, where lawmakers had sought a larger augment in defense spending than the current measure allows.
Lawmakers call the bill’s 14.5% pay augment for junior military members and a 4.5% augment for others key to improving the quality of life for those who serve in the U.S. military. Those who serve as junior staff are placed in pay grades generally consistent with the initial hiring period.
Lawmakers said military salaries have not remained competitive with those of the private sector, forcing many military families to rely on food banks and government assistance programs to put food on the table. The bill also includes significant up-to-date funding for child care and housing.
“No military member should have to live in deplorable conditions and no military family should have to rely on food stamps to feed their children, but that is exactly what many of our military members are experiencing, especially junior recruits,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “This bill goes a long way toward fixing that.”
The bill sets out key Pentagon policies that lawmakers will seek to fund through a subsequent budget proposal. The total spending matches the numbers set in a 2023 agreement that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached with President Joe Biden to augment the country’s borrowing authority and prevent a federal default in return for spending limits. Many senators wanted to augment defense spending by about $25 billion beyond what was included in the agreement, but those efforts failed.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who is expected to be the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the overall spending level was a “tremendous loss to our national defense,” although he agreed with many provisions in the bill.
“We must make a generational investment to deter the axis of aggressors. “I will not stop working with my congressional colleagues, the Trump administration and others until we get it done,” Wicker said.
Republicans in the House of Representatives do not want to go beyond the McCarthy-Biden agreement on defense spending and are aiming to stay well below on many non-defense programs.
They also focus on cultural issues. The bill prohibits funding for the teaching of critical race theory in the military and prohibits TRICARE health plans from covering treatment for gender dysphoria in children under 18 if that treatment could result in sterilization.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, said minors struggling with gender dysphoria are a “very real problem.” He said available treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, have proven effective in helping teenage people deal with suicidal thoughts, anxiety and depression.
“These treatments have changed their lives and in many cases saved their lives,” Smith said. “And in this bill we decided to ban the children of military personnel from having access to that.”
Smith said the number of minors in military families receiving transgender health care is in the thousands. He could have supported a study asking medical experts whether such treatments were being overused, but a ban on health insurance coverage went too far. He said Speaker Mike Johnson’s office insisted on the ban, saying the provision “tarnishes an otherwise excellent law.”
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the ban a step in the right direction, saying, “I think these questions need to be taken out of the defense debate so we can get back to defending the United States of America, without himself.” having to deal with social engineering debates.”
Smith said he agreed with Roy that lawmakers should focus on the military and not cultural conflicts, “and yet it’s in this bill.”
Branden Marty, a Navy veteran who served for 13 years, said losing transgender medical coverage could lead some with valuable experience to leave the military, which would impact national security because ” “We already have problems with recruitment and retention”. He also said the bill could force service members to make hard financial decisions on a regular basis.
“It will be difficult for many of them because of the out-of-pocket costs, especially for the recruited members who we know are already struggling with food insecurity,” said Marty, the father of a transgender teenager. “They’re not paid very well, so they’re going to have to make a lot of decisions on a day-to-day, tactical level.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said his team has not told Democrats how to vote on the bill.
“There are a lot of positive things in the National Defense Authorization Act that were negotiated on a bipartisan basis, and there are also some troubling provisions in some areas,” Jeffries said.
In total, 81 Democrats voted for the bill and 124 voted against it. On the Republican side, 200 voted for the bill and 16 voted against it.
“It is disappointing to see 124 of my Democratic colleagues vote against our brave men and women in uniform for pursuing policies that have nothing to do with their intended mission,” Johnson said.
The defense policy bill also aims to strengthen deterrence against China. It calls for investments of $15.6 billion to build military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region. The Biden administration had requested about $10 billion.
With regard to Israel, the bill includes, among other things, an expansion of joint US military exercises with Israel and a ban on the Pentagon from citing Hamas casualty data.
The defense policy bill is one of the last measures lawmakers consider crucial to pass before a up-to-date Congress can convene in January.
