House passes defense bill, clearing it for Biden
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed an $886 billion defense bill on Thursday, approving the measure for President Biden after an uprising from the far right over the exclusion of restrictions they had sought on access to abortion, transgender care and racial diversity and inclusion policies had been pushed aside. Pentagon.
The 310-118 vote reflected the bipartisan nature of the bill, which received support from a majority of Democrats and Republicans despite vocal opposition from hardliners, who staged a last-ditch uprising in the House of Representatives in an attempt to end the block elections. its passage. Biden is expected to sign the measure into law, continuing Washington’s six-decade streak of annual passage of military policy legislation.
This year’s defense bill authorizes a 5.2 percent pay increase for military and civilian Pentagon employees. It is also investing in a variety of measures to improve competition with Russia and China, including expanding regional partnerships in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, developing hypersonic weapons and upgrading its nuclear arsenal.
The bill establishes a submarine deal at the heart of a new security partnership with Britain and Australia, known as AUKUS, and frees up hundreds of millions of dollars to send weapons to Ukraine and Israel. It doesn’t answer the bigger question of whether Congress will approve tens of billions of dollars in emergency funds for the two countries’ war efforts as part of a $110.5 billion spending bill that has stalled in Congress amid a dispute between Republicans and Democrats on linking measures to address migration across the U.S. border with Mexico.
It would also extend through 2025 a program that allows the intelligence community to conduct unauthorized surveillance of foreign individuals outside the United States. The program has come under fire for the way the FBI handles Americans’ private messages.
“Compromises are needed to pass legislation in a divided government, and this bill is a good compromise,” Rep. Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on the floor. “It is very much focused on deterring our adversaries, especially China.”
But many conservatives were outraged by the compromise, which jettisoned several social policies on hot-button cultural issues they had sought. Over the summer, right-wing lawmakers pressured the Republican Party to include measures to close the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion offices in the bill; ban transgender health services; and banned drag shows on military bases.
The House-passed version also would have repealed a policy that provided paid leave and transportation reimbursement to servicemembers who travel long distances to obtain abortions or fertility care. The Pentagon adopted the abortion access policy after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leading to a patchwork of laws across the country that could give military personnel unequal access to such services depending on where they were stationed.
The Senate bill did not include any of these provisions, and during bipartisan talks between the two chambers to resolve disagreements over the legislation, they were dropped.
Soldiers are “frustrated by the state of affairs as our military is being turned into a social engineering experiment instead of dedicating itself to its core function of defending this country,” Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, argued in the House of Representatives. On Wednesday evening, he called on his colleagues to reject the compromise bill.
Seventy-three Republicans ultimately opposed the bill, along with 45 Democrats. But with strong bipartisan support, proponents were able to muster the two-thirds majority needed to quickly move the bill through the House of Representatives, under special fast-track rules for non-controversial bills.
As part of the agreement, Democrats accepted some items from the Republican Party’s list of priorities. The legislation imposes a salary cap on positions dealing with diversity, equality and inclusion training, which is expected to require the transfer of a number of senior officials. It bans the teaching of critical race theory in military schools. It will also create a review board to consider reassigning service members discharged for refusing to comply with the military’s now-defunct Covid vaccine mandate, and appoint a special inspector general to oversee how on which US aid to Ukraine has been used.
“You cannot oppose this bill and claim that you support the national security of this country,” said Rep. Adam Smith, Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Armed Services panel. “Because this bill represents the bipartisan compromise we worked for to get a good bill that meets our national security needs.”
Opposition to the bill was also fueled by the last-minute addition of a provision that would extend a warrantless surveillance program that is nearing its expiration date until next year. The program, created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows the government to conduct wiretaps on foreign targets outside the United States.
It has come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill, from both Republicans and Democrats, as the communications of Americans in contact with these foreign targets are often collected during the wiretaps, and there is widespread evidence that FBI officials who wrongly passed on information.
When Congress returns to Washington in January, the House is expected to resume a highly charged debate over whether and how to overhaul the program. Leaders have argued that the extension of the defense bill, which would push the program’s expiration date to mid-April, is simply a stopgap to give Congress more time to have that debate.
But because of the way Congress wrote the statute, even the short-term extension would allow the secretive oversight court to extend the wiretapping authority until April 2025 — a fact that has led conservative Republicans and many liberal Democrats, who have long warned of the dangers of the program, to call for rejection of the defense bill.
“It is extremely important that we do everything we can to ensure that we do not pass a FISA from this House that does not protect the American people,” Representative Michael Cloud, Republican of Texas, argued in the House of Representatives. “We cannot continue to allow them to spy on and surveil the American people without a warrant.”
Supporters of expanding surveillance powers argued that they should be preserved to protect the United States from terrorist attacks.
“By God, let us reform it, but not let it decay,” said Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. “If it ends, Americans and allies will die.”