House poised for NDAA debate
WASHINGTON — The House takes up its annual National Defense Authorization Act this week, and the most consequential amendments may or may not be the ones that generate the most rhetorical heat.
By the time the dust settles at week’s end, the House will almost certainly have passed its fiscal 2023 NDAA. Members have filed more than 1,200 amendments to the bill, but less than half of them can be expected to be made in order. Last year, the House voted on 476 amendments.
Depending on which amendments are allowed by the Rules Committee during Tuesday’s meeting, the subsequent floor debate could see intense back-and-forth on a number of topics.
RECURRING ISSUES
The amendments that have been filed include some, coming from the ideological extremes of the two parties, that are not likely to be adopted.
These include GOP attempts to block Defense Department COVID-19 vaccine mandates or to disallow certain consequences for servicemembers who flout those requirements.
The debate could also include a pair of Republican amendments that would bar the transfer or release of prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba — proposals the Democratic majority is likely to defeat.
Also facing an uphill climb are some Democratic amendments, such as those that would cut the total amount of spending authorized in the bill, an amount the Congressional Budget Office pegged this month at $840.2 billion.
Proposals from both parties to repeal authorizations to use military force in Iraq and Afghanistan — laws that are now more than two decades old — also face long odds of enactment, even if the House were to adopt them.
NEW ENTRANTS
Beyond those partisan proposals, the House may consider amendments that could, if enacted, have a sizable impact on everything from disabled veterans savings accounts to the fate of international alliances.
These amendments include proposals to restrict military aid to Turkey and Saudi Arabia; another that would give the mayor of Washington, D.C., command over the D.C. National Guard; a change to Pentagon budget rules; stricter regulation of chemicals that threaten drinking water; and an amendment to require that Congress be notified when a president has ordered a nuclear strike under certain circumstances.
The nuclear amendment, by Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, would require that the Defense secretary, or whichever official received a presidential order to use nuclear weapons absent a declaration of war, must notify congressional leaders of it “before carrying out such an order.”
On the disabled veterans issue, two separate amendments, each with broad bipartisan support, would take slightly different approaches to changing the law so that the estimated 50,000-plus veterans who have sustained lifelong injuries in war do not see their retirement pay from the Defense Department offset by the amount of their disability pay from the Department of Veterans Affairs.