News Analysis
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.
By John Haughey
