House Republicans on Thursday passed a controversial amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit the Pentagon from covering expenses for service members who travel to receive abortion-related services.
The amendment is one of several controversial changes approved by Republicans. It threatens to eliminate support for the bill among Democrats and moderate Republicans and raises serious questions about the ability of the House to eventually reconcile its version of the must-pass legislation with one to come from the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Thursday’s votes come after the House Rules Committee on Wednesday approved roughly 300 relatively non-controversial amendments for consideration on the floor, out of a total of more than 1,500 that had been offered. In a late-night meeting that stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning, the committee then agreed to allow votes on 80 additional amendments that touch on hot-button issues including abortion funding, diversity training, climate change, Ukraine war funding and keeping Confederate names on military bases.
The agreement to allow votes on the controversial amendments emerged following a push by right-wing Republicans, many affiliated with the Freedom Caucus, to include a whole host of culture-war issues in the defense authorization bill, which they threatened to scuttle if their demands were not met.
Making it hard to meet in the middle: Democrats say that some of the amendments — and the abortion one in particular — will undermine their support for the bill, which has passed on a bipartisan basis for 62 years in a row. Rep. Jim McGovern, the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, complained that it is “outrageous that a small minority of MAGA extremists is dictating how we’ll proceed.”
Rep. Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip, warned that if funding for Pentagon’s abortion policy is revoked, Democrats will refuse to support the bill. “What we’re seeing now, the GOP once again choosing extremism, making abortion and women’s health care and freedom in this country the issue that they put over our national security,” she told CNN. “So we’ll see how this plays out and what amendments are taken up but I don’t see Democrats supporting an NDAA with that in it.”
Prior to the vote, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar also said that the amendments could make it very difficult to win bipartisan support. “There’s a number of poison pill policy riders that would be deeply troubling to the House Democratic Caucus,” he said. “I think one deeply problematic [rider] for the House Democratic Caucus would be the Tommy Tuberville-type of language restricting women from receiving leave in order to receive healthcare,” he added, referring to the Alabama senator who is holding up hundreds of promotions at the Pentagon in protest of the department’s abortion policy. “That one is deeply problematic, and if it was included, I think it would be as close to a red line as I think we're willing to discuss.”
Even some Republicans are pushing back against the hardliners’ approach. “If we want to fight out social policies, have cultural wars, they should be done outside the NDAA,” Rep. Nick LaLota, a Republican from Long Island, told CNN’s Manu Raju.
Republicans press ahead: Still, dozens of hardline Republicans are highly motivated to push their border cultural agenda through the defense bill. Rep. Ronny Jackson, the Texas Republican who served as White House physician to former president Donald Trump, made it clear that he intends to stand by his now-successful amendment on abortion policy.
"President Biden and [Defense] Secretary Austin are knowingly breaking the law with their illegal policy of using taxpayer dollars to fund and provide access to abortions in the military," he told the Washington Examiner. "The Biden administration is jeopardizing our military’s readiness by forcing this illegal abortion policy down the throats of the American people. Congressman Chip Roy and I are proud to work alongside Senator Tuberville in our efforts to hold the Department of Defense accountable and end this illegal policy.”
So far, the hardliners have been pleased with the results of their efforts. “This is not a Paul Ryan Republican majority,” Rep. Clay Higgins, an extreme hardliner from Louisiana, said. “Leadership has done an excellent job here. And the Rules Committee guys have busted their ass getting this thing into a package where the most conservative of us can say, 'Wow, this is a legitimate, good-faith effort.'”
At the same time, Higgins said he would vote against the defense bill if it doesn’t include the amendments he wants, which touch on abortion, gender-affirming medical care and Ukraine aid.
The bottom line: As we saw during the negotiations over raising the debt limit, far-right Republicans are demanding to have their way, even if their efforts threaten to derail must-pass legislation — as the Pentagon abortion policy amendment certainly does.
