Senate Passes Defense Bill, Setting Up Showdown With House Over ‘Culture War’ Measures

The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on June 1, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The U.S. Senate has adopted a proposed fiscal year (FY) 2024 $866.3 billion defense budget that does not include the “culture war” amendments the House installed in its version of the massive appropriations package, setting up a chamber clash in the coming weeks that could imperil the “must-pass” bill’s approval before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

The Democrat-majority upper chamber approved the annual defense budget, referred to as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with a bipartisan vote of 86-11 after week-long deliberations concluded in a nine-hour July 27 floor session.

“We have a defense budget that meets the moment we face in an increasingly dangerous world,” Senate Armed Forces Committee ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker (R) said after the vote.

The Senate’s weeklong NDAA deliberations were relatively sedate compared to how the defense budget was debated on the House floor.

While the NDAA typically passes both chambers in a bipartisan vote, the GOP-led House on July 14 approved its version in a 219–210 party-line vote. The House bill was loaded with a raft of “culture war” amendments that will now be points of contention as the two versions are reconciled.

Those measures include repealing the Department of Defense’s (DoD) abortion travel policy, prohibiting DoD health care programs from providing gender transition procedures, a DoD ‘Parents Bill of Rights,’ and a host of other proposed add-ons eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

The Senate version includes none of these add-ons, sponsored primarily by House Freedom Caucus conservatives, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in floor remarks derided as “a race-to-the-bottom” infusion of ideology into the nation’s defense budget, vowing Democrats would ensure they are not in the final bill.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks during a hearing with the Helsinki Commission in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Next Stop: Conferencing

While the differences in the two proposed budgets appear to be acute, it is not unusual for the Senate and House to produce different versions of the federal government’s 12 annual appropriations bills, including the massive defense budget.

Differences between appropriations and the version the Senate approves will be resolved in conferencing between the chambers, a somewhat informal negotiation with each represented by a temporary, ad hoc panel. In NDAA talks, armed service committee members are usually named to conference panels.

“I look forward to go to conference to work on a bill on a bipartisan basis as vigorously as we did in adopting this bill,” Senate Armed Forces Committee Chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said.

While both proposed NDAAs reflect the $886.3 billion top-line figure submitted by the Biden administration in March, they shift monies around. The Senate earmarks $876.8 billion in defense spending while the House’s version outlines $874.2 billion. Each plan estimates varied non-defense appropriations to reach a common top line of $886.3 billion. Overall, it is $28 billion more than last year’s defense bill.

“Our threats are much greater now than they were in 1961 when the first NDAA was passed,” Mr. Wicker said.

The budget includes a 5.2 percent pay raise for uniformed service members, money for accelerated submarine construction, an amphibious assault ship the Marines requested, and a sharp focus on countering China in the Pacific and Russia in Europe.

Both chambers’ NDAAs funnel funding and resources to Taiwan as it prepares a “porcupine defense” to fend off a threatened invasion by the Chinese regime.

The Senate’s NDAA contains “provisions to solve the recruiting crisis, including a massive expansion of the ROTC program, a citizenship builder, support for submarine programs, the development of a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile” and multi-year appropriations that send “a clear signal to our industrial base and we will produce these arms here in the United States,” Mr. Wicker said.

The bill is notable for its “willingness to harness emerging technologies, including AI [Artificial Intelligence], offensive cyber, hypersonics, and unmanned vehicles,” he said. “We intend to lap Beijing in a 100-year marathon of innovation.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is among GOP senators who want more money for defense than is allowed under Biden-McCarthy 3.3-percent spending cap deal. (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / POOL / AFP) Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Spending Cap Also An Obstacle

There were 1,217 provisions in the Senate NDAA, 504 from members that were adopted in markups. More than 930 amendments were submitted with several dozen debated between July 18 and July 27.

The bill “confronts the challenges we face today in a very difficult world,” Mr. Reed said, noting that it calls for “re-catalyzing our [nuclear weapons] triad and [look] closely at space to prevent space from undermining our national security. I am confident that what we have done will provide the resources [the military] need to meet the challenges of a dangerous world.”

Resolving the differences between the House’s amendment-larded defense budget and the Senate’s version isn’t the only obstacle the NDAA faces in being adopted before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Under terms of the new debt-ceiling law negotiated between House GOP leaders and the Biden administration, failure to adopt the NDAA or the other annual spending bills by Oct. 1 will automatically induce a 1-percent across-the-board spending trim.

The debt-ceiling deal was approved by the House on May 31 and the Senate on June 1. It suspends the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025 in exchange for caps on federal discretionary spending over the next two years.

Under the deal to provide the 3.3 increase in defense spending, discretionary non-defense spending in the FY24 federal budget is capped at $703.7 billion and then limited to no more than a 1 percent increase in FY25.

House Republicans have proposed trimming an additional $120 billion from federal discretionary non-defense spending with proposed cuts of 15-to-30 percent for Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments.

Key Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Fla.), and Wicker are unhappy with the spending cap and want more money for the Pentagon, perhaps in a separate appropriations package this fall.

Ideally, he wanted to increase defense spending beyond the 3.3-percent cap to as much as 5 percent, Mr. Wicker said.

But not everyone always gets want they want, he said, calling the Senate NDAA “a strong bipartisan product.”