Confederate base name puts military pay raise at risk
WASHINGTON — An annual defense policy measure that has passed Congress every year since the Kennedy administration is in danger of cratering next month over a move by Democrats to rename military bases, such as Fort Benning, that are named after Confederate officers.
President Donald Trump opposes renaming bases like Fort Hood and has threatened to veto the popular measure over the provision, which was added to the House and Senate versions of the defense authorization bill this summer.
Republicans are vowing they will not send the broader bill to Trump if it includes language requiring bases named after Confederate officers to be renamed. Trump used the debate this summer to appeal to Southern voters nostalgic about the Confederacy, and those appeals remain relevant now due to two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will determine control of the chamber during the first two years of President-elect Joe Biden’s tenure.
“I am concerned that there is at least the potential that political concerns, especially with the Georgia runoffs, are going to play a bigger role,” said top House Armed Services Committee Republican Mac Thornberry of Texas.
“I have no doubt that we can reach an agreement. The question is whether the politics above us will allow us to,” Thornberry said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., is backing Trump, aides involved in the talks say.
But Democrats, who won GOP support in both the House and Senate to force the renaming of the bases, vow they will not back down.
Typically, when House and Senate versions of legislation contain comparable provisions, the default position is to leave the language in the final product. The differences between the House and Senate provisions are relatively modest.
“It’s Senate language that we want to agree to,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. “So there shouldn’t be controversy here.” He called Trump “a little bit erratic at the moment.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says the names must be changed.
“It is imperative that the conference report include provisions that secure this essential priority,” she said “Our bases should reflect our highest ideals as Americans.”
The bill has to pass next month to avoid breaking a 59-year streak of enacting the annual measure, which sets policy across the Pentagon and would award the military a 3% pay raise starting Jan. 1, among its other provisions.