Senate Passes Bipartisan Defense Bill, Setting Up a Clash With the House
“What’s happening in the Senate is a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House, where House Republicans are pushing partisan legislation that has zero chance of passing,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on the floor Thursday. “We are passing important bipartisan legislation; they are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing.”
House Republican leaders capitulated to pressure from right-wing lawmakers to load up the legislation with partisan provisions, prompting all but four Democrats to oppose it. That measure would shutter the Pentagon’s diversity training offices, end military health coverage for gender transition treatments, and block the Pentagon from offering time off and travel reimbursement to service members needing to travel out of state to obtain an abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade.
Democrats have made clear that they would never support those measures.
The Senate’s bill is silent on the matter of abortion and transgender services. But it nods to Republicans’ frequent complaints that the Pentagon has been overtaken by liberal policies run amok; it would bar the Pentagon from requiring that people list their preferred pronouns on official correspondence, and impose salary caps and a hiring freeze on positions dedicated solely to promoting equity and inclusion.
The Biden administration warned in a statement about the Senate bill on Thursday that those provisions would undermine efforts promote a diverse work force. The White House has said that President Biden would veto the House bill.
The chief Republican objection to the Senate measure was that it was not large enough.
“Ideally we would have an annual 3 to 5 percent boost above inflation to our top line,” Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said on the floor Thursday night. “Even without that budget increase our committee has advanced a strong bipartisan product that contains numerous, important provisions.”
Source: The New York Times
