The House on Wednesday easily passed the annual Defense policy bill, sending the mammoth, $900 billion measure to the Senate ahead of the year-end deadline.
The measure, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed the lower chamber by a vote of 312-112. Ninety-four Democrats and 18 Republicans opposed the bill.
The NDAA, a traditionally bipartisan bill that lays out defense priorities for the next year, would increase pay for service members, provide some military aid to Ukraine, restrict U.S. investment in China and fully repeal sanctions on Syria, among other things.
It also contained a provision to withhold a portion of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until he turns over unedited footage of U.S. military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and copies of the orders behind the operations.
While the final vote wasn’t close, the legislation’s passage wasn’t without some drama.
The bill had barely cleared a key procedural vote just hours earlier. House leadership held the vote open for more than an hour as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) persuaded Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) to flip their “no” votes to yes.
They said they did so after receiving assurances from GOP leadership and administration officials. Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) was the only Republican to vote “no” on the rule.
“I would vote for an increase in pay for soldiers, but they put that in there to try to get you to vote for all the other stuff. There’s still a lot of waste in the bill,” Massie, who also voted against the bill’s final passage, told The Hill.
He also criticized the aid to Ukraine in the bill.
“I thought we were getting out of Ukraine. I don’t know why we still need to spend money there,” he said.
There was some grumbling about provisions that were left out of the final NDAA.
Several hard-line conservatives had raised concerns that the bill doesn’t include a provision to prevent the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which could reshape electronic payments around the Federal Reserve. They’ve argued that such a currency could be used to surveil Americans.
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), who voted against final passage, wrote on X that “leaving out protections for the financial privacy of Americans is unacceptable.”
“We must demand better—and fight on in the next must-pass bill to ensure a CBDC never sees the light of day. Financial freedom isn’t negotiable,” he wrote.
But a House leadership aide previously told The Hill that efforts to include a CBDC ban fell apart amid negotiations over a bipartisan housing package.
Fiscal hawks were also not happy that the bill had a top line of about $8 billion more than the $892.6 billion that President Trump requested in May.
A point of contention among Democrats, meanwhile, was the removal of a provision to expand IVF coverage for active duty service members and military families. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) had passed an IVF amendment through the House Armed Services Committee back in July to be included in the NDAA. However, Johnson had worked behind the scenes to kill the provision.
“Speaker Johnson just stole the opportunity for service members to build their families through IVF, putting his personal beliefs over their dreams. It’s an unbelievably selfish and callous move against people who’ve served and sacrificed so much for us, especially when he and his own staff have access to health care plans that provide IVF coverage,” Jacobs, who ultimately voted against the bill’s final passage, wrote in a Dec. 7 statement.
However, the NDAA still had enough bipartisan support to pass the lower chamber.
“While I have concerns about how the Speaker and White House handled the final negotiations of the bill, the majority of this legislation reflects months of bipartisan negotiations done in good faith between the House and Senate Armed Services Committees,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a Dec. 8 statement.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), chair of the House Republican Conference, wrote on the social platform X, “I’m proud that our annual defense bill restores lethality, invests in critical infrastructure at Selfridge, increases troop pay, and gives our warfighters the tools they need to crush our enemies and defend America. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!”