The U.S. Senate has passed a nearly $740 billion defense policy bill that largely avoided the contentious Republican-led efforts to insert divisive culture war issues into the legislation.
The massive National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, was approved with an 84-13 vote early Thursday. The legislation is a massive and bipartisan endeavor, as it sets the size and scale of the military’s budget, mission, and organization, and is usually routinely approved.
Democrats had fought against numerous GOP efforts to attach riders, which sought to pursue several culture-war issues, including drought-driven protests over the Confederate flag and limits on certain diversity trainings on military bases.
In the end, the GOP’s “culture warrior” provisions were mostly removed or renamed. The Confederate flag provision was replaced with one that bars the military from display of the flag at the Pentagon, which Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had already announced he was doing last June.
Likewise, efforts to ban deposits in hotels owned by President Donald Trump, and prohibit the use of Confederate names of military posts, were not included in the bill.
The NDAA also funds the U.S. military’s operations and programs, and provides pay raises for service members. It also contains provisions that focus on U.S. defense strategy in emerging fields, such as space and cyber. It along with two other major pieces of legislation—the Homeland Security Authorization Bill and the Defense Appropriations Bill–fund the majority of the military’s activities.
The NDAA, which has been passed 56 times over the last 58 years, must still be merged with the House version that would further tweak some language contained in the Senate’s version of the bill. But the overall framework of the act is expected to remain largely unchanged when it is finally passed into law.
The NDAA represents a bipartisan effort by lawmakers who often can’t agree on much else, but argue it is primarily about ensuring the nation is ready to defend itself. President Trump has said he will sign the NDAA into law when it is finally sent to his desk.
