Defense Bill Agreement angers hard right and threatens Johnson

The annual defense bill has become entangled in a tumultuous Republican feud in the House of Representatives, as far-right lawmakers rebel against a bipartisan deal to jettison a series of highly partisan diktats that would have limited access to abortion, transgender care and diversity training.

The dispute over the $886 billion military policy bill, considered one of the few pieces of legislation Congress must pass annually, is unlikely to sink the legislation altogether. But it has created a political crisis for Speaker Mike Johnson, who has faced withering criticism from ultraconservative Republicans over his handling of the government spending measures and is now facing a backlash over what is normally a broadly popular bill.

“It’s going to be a really big problem for him if he puts it on the ground. Our base is going to be outraged,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said of the defense bill. She blasted Mr Johnson for abandoning a litany of policy changes that Conservatives had championed, adding: “He is going to lose support.”

The bill has been a lightning rod for controversy since this summer, when House Republicans, under pressure from the far right to combat what they called “wokeness” in the military, packed it with measures to improve access to abortion and health care for turn back transgender people. service members and training in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The result was a crudely partisan bill that passed the House largely along party lines, a rarity for the defense policy bill, which traditionally receives one-sided bipartisan support.

But the Democratic-led Senate approved a much more restrained version, and in closed-door talks between the then two chambers, House negotiators abandoned almost all of their most extreme policy dictates. The compromise package, released late Wednesday, prompted cries of betrayal from right-wing Republicans, who were further outraged to discover that it included an expansion of a warrantless surveillance program that many believe has been abused to spy on Americans.

Now Mr Johnson is preparing for a revolt against the Bill on the right, which is all but inevitable. Action in the House of Representatives is expected later this month, following passage of the legislation in the Senate, which took the first steps to consider it on Thursday.

Mr. Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana who was elected chairman in October, is well aware that his predecessor was ousted by Republican hardliners who were angry that he had made deals with Democrats and who felt he had not had enough met the demands of his conservative party. base. In theory, he could suffer the same fate under House rules that allow a single lawmaker to call a snap vote to remove the chairman, though Republicans appear to have no appetite for a repeat of the damaging episode.

Mr. Johnson, a staunch conservative, initially enjoyed some leeway from right-wing lawmakers who always distrusted and disliked former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Last month, many of them argued that the new chairman deserved time to get his bearings, and mostly refrained from criticizing him for working with Democrats to pass a stopgap spending measure to end a to prevent a government shutdown that had not undergone any of the cuts or policy changes they expected. popular.

But their response to the compromise on the defense bill suggests they are losing patience with Mr Johnson.

“I would say this is a building block,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, one of eight Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. McCarthy. “It leads to even more disappointments.”

A spokesman for Mr. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. But several House Republicans defended him, arguing that the hardliners’ demands were unrealistic.

“We voted for this package knowing that everything would be scrapped in the Senate,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know it wouldn’t be in the final bill.

Congress has passed an annual military policy bill for more than 60 years, and members of both parties believe Mr. Johnson can help maintain that line. On Thursday, the Senate voted to debate the compromise defense bill; The House is expected to follow suit next week.

Another major challenge to passage could come from the last-minute addition of a short-term extension of a surveillance law known as Section 702, which allows the government to collect the communications of foreigners abroad without arrest warrants — even if the targets are with Americans speak.

More than fifty Republicans and Democrats signed a letter last week, arguing that it would be irresponsible to expand the program without significant changes. This week, the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees passed rival bills on a bipartisan basis to limit the program. The defense bill would extend it until April 19, 2024, to give lawmakers more time to iron out differences between the competing bills.

But because of a quirk in the way Congress wrote the law that created it, that seemingly short extension could keep the program alive even into 2025.

The addition of the Section 702 expansion prompted a wave of new recriminations Thursday from conservatives, who vowed to try to rally votes against the bill.

“I’m going to have to be more than against it,” said Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas in a message social media, in response to a senator who opposed the extension. Mr. Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus, sits on the Rules Committee, which controls what legislation comes to the House of Representatives and in what form.

Some Republicans are also angry that the bill does not change the Pentagon’s policy of allowing service members to take leave and be reimbursed for transportation costs if they need to travel for an abortion or certain fertility treatments, because such procedures are not available where they are located. The policy came about after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving the country with a patchwork of abortion laws.

The legislation also leaves out a House-passed provision to limit transgender health services available to military members and their families.

However, the bill includes limited restrictions on diversity initiatives, including caps on salaries and hiring for positions devoted solely to such training programs, and a ban on teaching critical race theory at military academies and schools. It also includes a ban on requiring Defense Department personnel to identify themselves by the pronouns they prefer, and a ban on officially displaying “unapproved” flags — including banners that promote LGBTQ pride express.

Republicans have also made provision for the creation of a review board to consider reinstatement requests from service members released for refusing to comply with the military’s now-defunct Covid-19 vaccine mandate, and a special office of inspector- general to oversee how U.S. military aid to Ukraine is used.

However, the bill maintains a program to send Ukraine $300 million annually for the next two years, despite a majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives voting against that program this fall.

Charlie Savage reporting contributed.