House Republicans add culture war issues to traditionally bipartisan defense bill

Amna Nawaz:

The U.S. House passed a nearly $900 billion budget for the armed forces today largely on partisan lines. Most Democrats voted no after Republicans added anti-abortion and other provisions to the bill.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out the divide today.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy(R-CA):

A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. We don't want Disneyland to train our military. We want our men and women in the military to have every defense possible. And that's what our bill does.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY):

As House Democrats, we are going to cut out the cancer that the extreme MAGA Republicans have put in the National Defense Authorization Act, no matter what it takes, and we're going to partner with Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats to get a responsible National Defense Authorization Act.

Amna Nawaz:

New York Times congressional correspondent Karoun Demirjian is here to help us understand the plan's implications for the military and in Congress.

Demirjian, good to see you.

Karoun Demirjian, The New York Times:

Good to be here.

Amna Nawaz:

So, before we get into the details of some of these provisions, just give us the top lines here.

What are the key funding changes in this bill?

Karoun Demirjian:

We're looking at a bill that authorizes $886 billion to be spent on various defense and national security priorities.

It covers everything from programs to help the United States better counter China and Russia, sends $300 million in security assistance to Ukraine, and includes a 5.2 percent pay increase for active-duty troops.

Amna Nawaz:

So, as we mentioned, it passed mostly along party lines 219-210. Why did so many Democrats vote against it? What are they opposing?

Karoun Demirjian:

Well, in the last few days, the Republicans in the House have been adding a series of measures, amending them into the bill, that do a whole bunch of things Democrats don't like.

There was a measure that they voted on yesterday that rolled back a Pentagon policy that offers time off and travel reimbursement to people who have to go — service members who have to go out of state to obtain an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade. There was another provision they attached that would end the military's ability to offer health care coverage for gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies.

And there was a provision that slashed all the Offices of Diversity training and the officials that worked in those offices and another one that today that banned the DOD from actually implementing Biden's climate change executive orders. So all of these things together are anathema for the Democratic Party.

And so all but four said, we're not on this anymore. This was supposed to be a bipartisan bill. And it's not.

Amna Nawaz:

There were two notable Republican amendment efforts that did fail. There was an attempt to limit Ukraine aid. That was backed by Republican Matt Gaetz and also Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others.

There was another provision to restore the old Confederate names of military bases. Why did some of those provisions fail to make it into this spell?

Karoun Demirjian:

Well, look, the Confederate name issue came up a couple of years ago, and it was — as much as President Trump at the time was pushing for it, it wasn't really completely popular in the Republican Party.

So the fact that you had people defect on that one in the GOP wasn't all that much of a surprise. The Ukraine one is really interesting, because we always knew that the Ukraine — the initiative to try to cut the Ukraine funding was going to fail. There's too many mainstream Republicans and leaders in that party that had been outspoken about, we need to actually maintain the support for Ukraine, because this is about the West versus Russia, and we don't want to have to fight a war with Russia and NATO.

But while Democrats and Republicans stayed together to vote them down, the interesting thing is how many more Republicans voted to actually cut that funding. About a year ago, we saw 57 Republicans vote against a bill that was just to send about $40 billion of humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine to help with the war effort.

Now we saw 70 Republicans say no more money for Ukraine, and I think it was about 89 Republicans said, let's cut that $300 million program that I just mentioned. And so that means those numbers are ticking up. So even though they didn't pass, it's interesting to see where the pendulum is swinging in the parties.

Amna Nawaz:

Some real divides there in the party to track.

But let's talk about the Senate version now, which will likely look very different…

Karoun Demirjian:

Very.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz:

… in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

So this is a critical must-pass bill. How does this get resolved?

Karoun Demirjian:

Well, that's a very good question. You're going to have a really, really Republican measure from the House coming face to face with a really, really Democratic measure looking at the Senate.

Now, if this were left just up to the chairs and ranking members of the Armed Services Committee, I would say that it would end up being a very boring bill. The four of them actually wanted to do a bill that was going to be very bipartisan, that was not going to get into these culture wars fights.

And if you just left the four of them in the room — a room together to work it out, they'd probably say, let's just — we did what we needed to do,but let's just do something that we can pass with both houses of Congress and a strong bipartisan majority.

But it's got to go through a conference process where a whole lot more people are going to be at the table. And they're going to be fighting really hard to include these provisions. And so, at the end of the day, it's not clear if they can get a resolution for that.

And that would be a situation where you would break Congress' streak of nearly six decades of passing this annually, which would basically mean that — the defense bill is the biggest policy bill Congress does every year. They're supposed to do these policy bills before passing the budgets for absolutely every part of the government.

Everything else has fallen away but defense, because it's such a huge, huge part of the budget. But I guess the worst-case scenario, if they can't actually get resolution, is that defense just goes the way of everything else has so far.

Amna Nawaz:

You know, I have to ask about one of the provisions you mentioned, to cut the DEI, or Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Office.

During the floor debate last night, one Republican congressman, Eli Crane, actually used an offensive and outdated term to refer to Black Americans.

Karoun Demirjian:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

He said "colored people."

Doesn't that seemed to undercut the Republican argument that these kinds of DEI trainings and that office is needed?

Karoun Demirjian:

Yes, there were a lot of Democrats that went on the floor after that to say you need DEI training in Congress if that's the terminology that you're going to use to describe this stuff.

I mean, look, the GOP won its fights in the House. Those — it's not going to win the fights through Congress. They are going to have to make compromises. But they have also been making their argument based on this line of, we don't need DEI training, it's a waste of money, it just encourages more racism, everyone's equal, let's just say that.

But the onus is on them to kind of walk the walk. And if people like Eli Crane are using the terms if they do, it really undercuts the argument that they're making and makes it look like they're actually trying to roll things back.

Amna Nawaz:

A lot to track there. We know you will be following it all.

That is New York Times congressional correspondent Karoun Demirjian joining us tonight.

Karoun Demirjian, good to see you.

Karoun Demirjian:

Good to see you too. Thank you.