WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a national defense authorization bill that was hailed for increasing troop pay but condemned by Democrats for targeting transgender children in military families, sending the bill to the desk by President Joe Biden.
The senators voted 83-12Five did not vote to pass the $884.9 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which was praised by both parties for increasing pay, modernizing military housing and investing in artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.
But the annual legislation drew anger this year by Democrats for a provision that would ban the military’s health program from covering certain treatments for youth with gender dysphoria, which doctors define as the discrepancy between a person’s assigned gender at birth and the gender they experience in everyday life. is defined.
All Democrats present at the December 11 vote in the US House of Representatives rejected the defense package passed along party lines under the Republican majority.
The White House has not announced its position on the bill, as it typically does with legislation ready to be signed by the president.
Wednesday’s Senate vote marks the 64th consecutive year that Congress has passed the defense package, a historically bipartisan process.
This year’s vote distribution was not far in line with the Senate’s results for defense legislation above The last five Years.
The bill does not provide funding for the Pentagon, but rather describes how any defense funds will be spent. Congress must agree to allocate dollars in separate budget bills.
Gender care
A low section in the 1,800 pages political roadmap Starting in 2025, military TRICARE health insurance coverage will be banned for children of service members who “receive medical procedures to treat gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization.”
Democrats claim the ban will affect thousands of military personnel, but the Pentagon declined to comment on the numbers. The Pentagon also did not respond to a second inquiry from State’s newsroom about whether the Defense Department tracks the number of transgender children of service members.
Treatment for gender dysphoria may include mental health interventions, hormone therapy, and surgery.
The provision comes as more than 20 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for transgender minors. after to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that 113,900 youth ages 13 to 17 live in states that ban such treatments.
While the bill does not specifically describe the types of interventions it seeks to ban, a publicly available template is available Summary called “hormones and puberty blockers” by the GOP-led House Armed Services Committee. The summary, titled “Restoring Our Military’s Focus on Lethality,” also highlighted language in the legislation that bans certain race-based training at defense facilities and freezes all Pentagon diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring.
Sen. Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he shared the frustration of his Democratic colleagues and called the ban on long-term care insurance for transgender youth, which he voted against during committee proceedings, “misguided.”
“Ultimately, however, we have a very strong National Defense Authorization Act before us. I am confident it will provide the Department of Defense and our service members with the resources they need to meet and deter the national security threats we now face,” Rhode Island’s Reed said ahead of the vote .
Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee’s ranking member, praised the defense package’s “immense achievements,” including the 4.5% pay augment for all military personnel and an additional 10% pay augment for the youngest soldiers.
“We have invested in Junior ROTC and recruiting capabilities, both of which will help solve the military’s workforce crisis. This bill prevents the Department of Defense from paying for puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children. We have blocked the teaching of critical race theory in military programs and we have frozen diversity equity and inclusion,” the Mississippi Republican said before voting began.
“Cheap political points”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Senate, said locally Tuesday that she would speak against the annual defense bill for the first time in her 12 years in the Senate.
The Wisconsin Democrat, who voted against the bill Wednesday, said commitment to the historically bipartisan exercise was “broken because some Republicans have decided it is more worthwhile to erode the rights of our service members to score cheap political points.” .”
“Some people estimate this will impact between 6,000 and 7,000 military families. For my part, I trust these service members and their families to make their own health care decisions without political interference,” she continued.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for Baldwin’s amendment to be withdrawn to remove the language from the legislation. The motion was approved without objection immediately before Wednesday’s vote. The chair’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the withdrawn amendment.
Twenty Democratic senators initially co-sponsored the amendment. They include Alex Padilla of California, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota, Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Patty Murray of Washington.
Kim, a former U.S. representative who was sworn in as a senator on Dec. 9, said House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence on the transgender provision in the bill “undermines confidence in the negotiations and sets a unsafe precedent for… “creating what is widely viewed as the last true space of traditional bipartisan legislation.”
“We are bringing politics into a bill where it simply doesn’t belong,” Kim said in the plenary on Tuesday.
Kim ultimately voted for the bill.
The chairman of the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, told Capitol Hill reporter last week that Johnson had not consulted him before retaining the wording in the final version.
Last updated on December 18, 2024 at 2:56 p.m
