By John Haughey
The House and Senate proposed Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Acts (FY24 NDAA) are set for floor adoptions, a summer of intra-chamber conferencing, and hopeful adoption by late September.
Both proposed FY24 NDAAs, or next fiscal year’s national defense budget, reflect the same $886.3 billion top-line figure submitted by President Joe Biden in March but jockey monies around.
In the broadest of strokes, the Senate version earmarks $876.8 billion in defense spending while the House’s version outlines $874.2 billion, with both plans estimating varied non-defense appropriations to come to the top-line $886.3 billion requested by the administration and the Pentagon.
Both plans authorize a 5.2-percent pay raise for service members, increase funding for a second Virginia-class attack submarine to be ordered in the same in annual procurement cycle, sustain a 31-ship amphibious force, and increase funding for retaining F-15s and F-16s.
The actual military details in the military budget will be sorted through in coming days, including in The Epoch Times.
Also in a wider context, the NDAA adopted by the House Armed Services Committee includes nearly two dozen amendments adopted in near-party line votes—31 of the panel’s 59 members are Republicans—related to outlawing critical race theory (CRT); diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI); environmental, social, governance (ESG) financial scoring; transgender and gay enlistment; and on-base drag shows; among other “woke” policies, including exemptions from greenhouse gas regulations.
None of those explicit provisions are in the spending plan proposed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, where 13 of the 25 members are Democrats. But the Senate version does includes ranking member, or lead Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker’s (R-Miss.) proposed “Military Merit, Fairness, and Equality Act of 2023″ (Merit Act), which would preserve the performance-based war-fighting ethos of the military and “stop the toxic, so-called ‘equity’ agenda at the Department of Defense (DOD) at its source.”
The Senate NDAA also does not include seven amendments adopted by the House Armed Services Committee in near-partisan tallies that offer varied remedies to those discharged from the military for not complying with COVID-19 and other vaccine mandates.
Different Budget Processes
The House Armed Services Committee approved its FY24 NDAA in a 58-1 vote during a 14 1/2-hour public hearing on June 21-22, while the Senate Armed Services Committee did so on June 22 following a closed classified hearing in a 24-1 tally.
As of June 25, the Senate has only released a 33-page executive summary of its proposed plan, which is far less detailed than the 416-page draft NDAA approved by the House Armed Services Committee and posted by chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).
Once the Senate and House pass their versions of the NDAA in July chamber votes, conflicts within the plans will be reconciled in bicameral conferencing through summer before one common plan is presented for adoption to both chambers and presented to Biden for signing.
Under terms of the new debt-ceiling law, the NDAA must be adopted before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. Failure to do so would induce a 1-percent across-the-board spending trim.
When those July floor adoptions will occur was uncertain as of June 25. The House doesn’t convene again until July 11. The Senate returns the following day. Few hearings have been penciled-in on the chambers’ July calendars.
The House spending plan incorporates approximately 800 amendments adopted by the committee’s seven subcommittees. The Senate version includes 286 of 445 amendments proposed by its armed services committee’s seven sub-panels.
Under the Senate plan, the DOD will receive $844.3 billion, $2 billion more than the Biden administration requested and nearly $3 billion more than the $841.5 billion House Pentagon appropriation.
The Senate tabs $34.4 billion for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) nuclear weapons program—a relatively marginal increase, in defense budget context, of about $100 million over the House’s plan.
The Senate’s NDAA “top line” or direct defense allocations is $876.8 bilion with the House’s set at $874.2 billion—a $2.6 billion difference both balanced out to $886.3 billion in varied estimates of “defense-related activities” outside the DOD. The Senate NDAA spots those at $9.5 billion, the House’s at $12.1 billion.
Cultural Issues Addressed Differently
During its marathon day of debating NDAA tweaks, the House adopted 11 of 13 proposed amendments that addressed CRT, DEI, and ESG, including a measure that would furnish active-duty parents of children in DOD schools a “Parents Bill of Rights.”
Within the House NDAA are provisions that ban CRT from DOD programs; require the DOD to document in a report “the actual cost” of CRT training; “codifies” a recent Pentagon directive banning drag shows on military installations or DOD money from being used in promotions involving drag queens; eliminates the Pentagon’s “Working Group on Extremism in the Military.”
The House defense budget includes amendments that: require a study on how Biden’s February 2022 executive order preventing discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation affects female service members; prohibit anyone engaged in “DEI activities” to be paid no higher than an Army captain and Navy lieutenant; preclude DOD from contracting with “Global Misinformation Index;” bans teaching of CRT in any DOD program; prohibits the DOD from funding its Defense Advisory Committee on DEI or to create one “related to” ESG; require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report within 90 days on how Defense Advisory Committee members on DEI were selected, and sunsets the committee by Sept. 30, 2024.
None of these amendments, nor the one calling on the Pentagon to produce a plan illustrating how it would blockade China, are included in the Senate’s NDAA.
But Wicker’s proposed “Merit Act,” adopted with Democrat votes within the Senate’s NDAA, indicates there is some bipartisan momentum in re-evaluating DOD DEI and transgender policies, which Republicans say are partially responsible for military recruiting shortfalls.
The provision prohibits the DOD from “prioritizing the demographic characteristics of service members above individual merit and demonstrated performance,” which has been an emphasis under DEI policies adopted under the Trump and Biden administrations.
“The toxic, so-called ‘equity’ agenda at the Department of Defense damages readiness and falsely suggests that our military has a problem with diversity,” Wicker said in a June 6 statement after introducing the proposal. “My legislation would stop this overreaching social policy at its source and protect the values of merit and equal opportunity that have made our military the most powerful in the world.
“The Pentagon must focus on deterrence over division.”
Like several of the House measures, Wicker’s Senate amendment mandates “a full accounting of the cost and content of previously opaque and unaccountable DEI programming across the DOD and ensures senior defense officials are not required to take time and effort promoting these toxic policies.”
“We must use all means available to preserve the performance-based war-fighting ethos of our military. The ‘Merit Act’ would stop the toxic, so-called ‘equity’ agenda at the DOD at its source and ensure our military remains focused on deterrence over division,” Wicker said.
Wicker’s amendment defines “equity” as “the right of all persons to have the opportunity to participate in, and benefit from, programs, and activities for which they are qualified,” and would ban any DOD-affiliated institution from any training or instruction that would violate this merit-based definition of equity.
The proposed House NDAA includes seven vaccine-related measures that seek to redress damages imposed on service members by the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
They include provisions to “prohibit adverse action for those service members who did not receive the COVID-19 vaccines;” reinstatement in the grade held at separation; and require military boards of corrections “to prioritize cases for those service members who did not receive the COVID 19 vaccines” using the same remediation process “we utilize for those service members separated during or under ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.’”
The vaccine-related amendments also require the Secretary of Defense to: communicate the reinstatement process for those discharged solely for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine; exempt those forced to leave service academies from being forced to reimburse tuition costs; prohibit DOD from demanding those terminated for refusing vaccines repay enlistment bonuses; and defund DOD biological, virological gain-of-function research.
None of these measures are included in the Senate’s proposed NDAA. Meanwhile, amendments in the Senate version also include provisions for assisting service members stationed in states where abortion is restricted to travel to states where the procedure is permitted.
