House Passes $895.2 Billion Defense Authorization Bill

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Dec. 11, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The House passed the latest version of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Dec. 11, moving the bill one step closer to becoming law.

The compromise NDAA bill, at more than 1,800 pages, provides up to $895.2 billion in discretionary defense spending for the fiscal year. The annual defense authorization bill lays out which programs and policies the U.S. military may pursue and to what degree it can support them through fiscal year 2025.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 281–140. In all, 200 Republicans and 81 Democrats voted for the bill, while 16 Republicans and 124 Democrats voted against it.

This latest draft of the NDAA differs from the one the House passed in June and reflects a compromise the Democrat-led Senate Armed Services Committee and the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee announced on Dec. 7.

Much of the NDAA is focused on funding various weapons development, production, and acquisition efforts. This year’s bill funds the building of seven new warships and supports the ongoing development of the new Columbia-class submarine and B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

Carrying over from the earlier House version of the bill, this latest NDAA draft also provides for a significant troop pay increase, including a 4.5 percent raise for all servicemembers and a targeted 14.5 percent raise for junior enlisted troops.

The bill provides for other quality-of-life measures, including increased cost of living and basic needs allowances, military spouse employment support, and funding for childcare programs.

In recent years, the NDAA process has been a venue for lawmakers battling over the cultural direction of the U.S. military.

The House’s June NDAA bill included many policy riders seeking to limit the military’s involvement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and the degree to which military medical services could support gender transitioning services. Many of these House provisions didn’t make it into the new compromise bill. The latest NDAA language does freeze hiring for DEI positions within the Department of Defense and bars the military’s Tricare medical plan from covering gender transitioning support for military dependents younger than the age of 18.

“This legislation includes House-passed provisions to restore our focus on military lethality and to end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a Dec. 7 statement supporting the latest NDAA draft.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee’s Democratic minority said they had some success blocking provisions “that attacked DEI programs, the LGBTQ community, and women’s access to reproductive health care.”

Some Democrats raised opposition to the remaining provision on Tricare coverage for gender transitioning support for minor children.

At a Dec. 9 House Rules Committee hearing to advance the NDAA, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking Democrat member on the House Armed Services Committee, announced in a Dec. 10 statement that he would vote against the compromise NDAA draft over the Tricare provision.

“Blanketly denying health care to people who need it—just because of a biased notion against transgender people—is wrong,” Smith said.

At a Dec. 11 press conference, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced that he had chosen to not pressure Democrats in the House to vote one way or the other on the bill.

“There’s a lot of positive things in the National Defense Authorization Act that were negotiated in a bipartisan way, and there are some troubling provisions in a few areas as well,” he said. “I haven’t taken an official position yet.”

Jeffries ultimately voted for the bill.

The bill must pass in the Senate before it can go to the president’s desk and be signed into law.