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John,
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) sent this year’s must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to the House floor with a nearly-unanimous bipartisan vote of 57-1.
That’s where the trouble started. Not satisfied with meeting the needs of the U.S. military for training, equipment, and resources, far-right extremists in the House passed amendment after amendment, rapidly turning a balanced piece of patriotic legislation into a MAGA wishlist of partisan demands.
In its amended form, the bill narrowly passed the House, 217-199 on party lines, belying its essentially bipartisan purpose, to provide for the common defense of all Americans. Only 6 Democrats voted for the bill, while 3 Republicans voted against it.
Appalled, the ranking member of the committee that produced the bill, Rep. Adam Smith, joined seven other Democrats in a letter deriding the “poison pill amendments” for their attacks on women, LGBTQ+ soldiers, reproductive health care, and people of color.
Smith’s letter notes that the amended bill passed by the full House “undermines the purpose” of the legislation, by “demeaning service members and degrading our national defense.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the Armed Services Committee passed its own version of the NDAA, without any of the poison pills, and is sending it to the full Senate now. After it passes, it must be reconciled with the House version, and this is where we come in: We must press the Senate to reject the extremist viewpoints that are harmful to our soldiers and to our preparedness.
Tell the Senate to ensure that the House’s regressive amendments do not make it into the final NDAA bill. This legislation is no place for fighting culture war battles that turn Americans against each other, rather than providing for the national defense.
The House Republicans’ demands attack our nation’s progress and values, our rights and those of our fellow Americans. Here are a few of the items the GOP saw fit to include in this required defense bill:
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No funds for any of the seven Climate Change Executive Orders signed by President Biden
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No out-of-state travel for needed reproductive health care
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No electric vehicle purchases or charging station infrastructure, keeping our military fossil fuel dependent and worsening the global climate crisis
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Modifying the Joint Travel Regulations for Uniformed Services to prohibit travel in zero-emission vehicles
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No drag shows or drag-related events
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Abolishes all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) related offices in the Defense Department and military, as well as the Defense Department’s chief diversity office, and
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Institutes a permanent hiring freeze on all jobs related to diversity, equity and inclusion
The House bill’s ban against drag shows runs counter to the military’s long and colorful history of soldiers in drag, dancing alongside Bob Hope in USO shows, in the World War II Ronald Reagan movie “This is the Army,” and for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House.
With unusual self-control, the House did manage to reject Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s pro-Putin proposal to ban all funding for Ukraine, and it rejected a proposal to tie our Pentagon funding for NATO to other countries’ military expenditures -- as if our military budget should be determined by the budgets of other nations.
However, these concessions to basic sanity do little to sanitize the overall insanity of the House’s MAGA-defined bill.
Tell the Senate to reject all the House’s extreme and unpatriotic amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.
Thank you for demanding passage of a non-partisan defense authorization bill to meet the needs of U.S. soldiers, wherever they are stationed in the world.
- Amanda
Amanda Ford, Director
Democracy for America
Advocacy Fund
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