WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate will vote Wednesday on final passage of a sweeping defense bill that will authorize significant pay raises for youthful service members and increase total military spending to $895 billion, while also providing coverage for medical treatments for transgender people for children of military personnel is eliminated.
The annual defense authorization bill typically has forceful bipartisan support and has passed Congress repeatedly for nearly six decades, but Pentagon policy has become a battleground over cultural issues in recent years. Republicans tried to shape social conservatives’ legislative priorities this year, contributing to months of negotiations over the bill and a decline in Democratic support.
Still, all but a handful of Senate Democrats — and nearly all Republicans — have supported the process to bring the compromise bill to a final vote.
“The NDAA is not perfect. It doesn’t have everything both sides would like. It contains some provisions that we Democrats would not have added and other provisions that we would have preferred to leave out entirely,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “But of course it takes bipartisan cooperation to get the whole thing over the finish line.”
In the House, a majority of Democrats voted against the bill last week after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on adding the provision banning the military health system from providing medical care to transgender children. The bill passed easily by a vote of 281 to 140.
Senate Republican leaders argued that the 1% increase in defense spending was not enough, especially at a time of global unrest and challenges to American dominance. Senate Republicans had supported a generational increase in defense spending this year but are planning another push for more defense spending once they have control of the White House and Congress next year.
The annual defense authorization bill regulates core Pentagon policy but would still need to be backed by a budget package.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a speech this week that without the revenue increase, “key provisions of the law like a pay increase for enlisted military personnel will come at the expense of investments in the critical weapons systems and munitions that deter conflicts and keep them safe.” “
The legislation provides a 14.5% pay increase for junior service members and a 4.5% increase for others. Lawmakers said this is key to improving service members’ quality of life at a time when many military families rely on food banks and other government assistance programs to make ends meet.
“This includes significant quality of life improvements, improving things like child care, housing, medical services, employment support for military spouses and much more,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The legislation also directs resources toward a more confrontational approach toward China, including establishing a fund that could be used to send military resources to Taiwan, much in the same way the U.S. has supported Ukraine. It is also investing in recent military technologies, including artificial intelligence, and bolstering U.S. munitions production.
The U.S. has also tried in recent years to ban the military from buying Chinese products, and defense legislation has expanded that with bans on Chinese goods from garlic in military commissariats to drone technology.
China’s foreign ministry responded to the move last week by calling the bans ridiculous.
“I don’t think garlic could ever be thought of as posing a ‘major threat’ to the United States,” said Mao Ning, a ministry spokeswoman. “From drones to cranes, refrigerators to garlic, more and more Chinese-made products are being accused by the US of posing ‘national security risks.’ But has the US provided reliable evidence or justification to back up these accusations?”
But in Congress, Republican and Democratic lawmakers were mostly united in their stance that China poses a growing threat. Instead, it was culture war issues that divided lawmakers over the bill, which took months to negotiate.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a version of the bill in June that banned the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing military members who travel to another state for an abortion, eliminated gender-affirming care for transgender troops and gutted diversity initiatives the military would have.
Most of those provisions did not make it into the final package, although Republicans expect Donald Trump to make sweeping changes to Pentagon policy when he takes office in January.
The bill also continues to prohibit 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.”
For some Democrats, banning treatment for transgender children — a treatment they said could be life-saving — was a red line.
In a speech, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said she has always voted for the NDAA but will not do so this year. She said the change in policies for transgender children would affect between 6,000 and 7,000 families, according to estimates available to her office.
“The NDAA embodies the idea that there is more that unites us than divides us, that our military members and national defense cannot be politicized. That we put our country above a party when it comes to the issue,” she said. “Unfortunately, that was ignored this year – all in an effort to restrict our service members’ right to the health care they need for their children.”
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Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.
