There’s a new can-do attitude washing over defense budget negotiations, with Republican lawmakers telling NOTUS they expect the culture wars that played out on the House floor over the summer to be pushed to the side.
Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee say amendments to prohibit funds for increased abortion access, health care for transgender troops and combating climate change could very well be left out of the final National Defense Authorization Act in order to get the bill through.
“My focus, and I hope we see it with the new administration, is lethality,” said Rep. Pat Fallon, a Texas Republican on the House Armed Services committee. “I mean, that’s what you want to be able to project power. The social issues were just a distraction.”This could set up a difficult situation for Speaker Mike Johnson, who would need to go back to the Republican conference with a defense budget that doesn’t include many of the most contentious GOP agenda items.
“I think the mechanism on which we are waiting is the speaker delivering the news to his right flank, that they’re not going to get the culture war stuff they wanted in the defense bill,” Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat on the committee, told NOTUS.
For more than 60 years, Congress has renewed the National Defense Authorization Act, usually on a bipartisan basis. Over the summer, Republicans pushed amendments aimed squarely at the Biden administration’s policies, including those focused on diversity, LGBTQ+ issues and abortion initiatives.
Now that the 118th Congress is in a lame-duck session, the focus is shifting to just completing the basics. Committee members are hoping outside forces don’t slow down their major pieces of legislation with riders. There’s a lot of risk of delays in the weeks ahead; debate over the upcoming continuing resolution for appropriations could kill the momentum for the NDAA, giving lawmakers another opening to pick through the bill and raise their own priorities.
On the committee, however, most just want to pass the bill.
“It’s just too important to get this thing through,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, who also sits on the committee, told NOTUS. “I think most people feel that way too.”
Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee and a key voice in negotiations, has told members of his party that talks have been productive and that staff from both chambers are already engaged in conversations over the final text of the bill.
“Making sure we get as much of the quality-of-life stuff that the House put in into the final product. I would say that’s probably, that’s probably number one.” Smith told NOTUS. “I think we have a real opportunity to do something significant on quality of life, and I hope we’ll keep as much of the House bill as possible.”
Democrats are also trying to safeguard funding for Ukraine and support for some of the newest Indo-Pacific alliances. And while those initiatives have a good chance of staying in the bill, some of the most partisan issues might not make it.
“The chair did a pretty good job of keeping out the culture war issues,” Jackson said. “And then the culture war issues got added on the floor.”
Both Rep. Mike Rogers, the committee chair, and Smith are publicly and privately making efforts to ensure the final bill looks more bipartisan, just like they did in committee.
For most members of the committee, that sits well within an acceptable compromise. Fallon said he wants to see a more apolitical military, and while he disagrees with some of the Biden-era policies, his primary concern is modernizing the force. He supported the original bill in the House, but now he and many of his committee colleagues are looking to get one of the last major pieces of legislation for the 118th Congress finished.
“I don’t want to be fighting yesterday’s wars. That’s a danger. I mean, we know that, and yet we tend to do it,” Fallon said.
One of Rep. Rich McCormick’s top priorities is also modernization, as he thinks current spending and the contracting process are not keeping up with the battlefield seen in the world today.
“If we’re not good with using our money, that over $800-plus billion spent doesn’t go to the lethality of our troops,” he said. He’s worried about new technologies. “There’s rapidly developing weapon systems, multiple weapon systems, that you can’t protect yourself from with the most hardcore attitude in the world.”
McCormick is another Republican voice saying he wants to focus on strengthening the bipartisan issues for the final bill. Members of the committee on both sides of the aisle told NOTUS that holding up the bill over these issues would be “shameful.”
“We all bleed red, and we all are shades of green,” McCormick said. “We don’t care what race you are. I don’t care what gender you are. I want to know that you can accomplish a mission, and you got my back, I got your back. That’s all that matters to me.”
The committee might be committed to bipartisanship, but the question is whether the House GOP, as a whole, will allow the NDAA through without addressing the most partisan parts of its agenda.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.