Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committee this week will draft competing versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass annual bill setting defense policy and spending caps for fiscal year (FY) 2024. The NDAA governs everything from servicemembers’ pay and benefits, to spending on major weapons systems, to foreign military aid. Congress has consistently passed the NDAA annually for more than 60 years. However, the NDAA and its aligned defense funding bill faces an especially bumpy road to passage this year.

A few items to watch this week and beyond as Congress develops a new NDAA:

In the open vs. hush-hush:

While both the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) will meet to draft their versions of the NDAA on the same day on June 21, much of the debate will remain secret. The HASC, Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) released his first-draft “chairman’s mark” more than a week ahead of the markup, with other HASC members preparing to push for changes to the bill in a publicly-broadcast marathon markup. This public process allows the public (and lobbyists) to quickly react and advocate as the House’s NDAA develops in real time. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), however, takes the opposite approach: almost all its NDAA development will be in closed markups, with no pre-released bill text or other information. The SASC will likely not release its draft NDAA until the full Senate is ready to consider the bill, which may not be for several weeks.

To bi(partisan) or not to be:

The Senate and House will also take different political approaches to the NDAA. The House’s draft NDAA will stick to the priorities of the House’s Republican majority, with little interest in input from the Biden Administration or the chamber’s Democrats. In contrast, Democrats control the Senate and SASC but are likely to draft their version of the NDAA to draw at least some GOP support. The Senate’s bipartisan starting point reflects the priorities of Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) and Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS), but also procedural realities: in the Senate, Democrats need support from at least nine Republicans to advance any major bill. As a result, the House and Senate will likely produce very different drafts of the NDAA, setting a difficult process for bicameral negotiators to eventually draft a compromise version. 

The war at home:

As always, the upcoming NDAA debates will likely reflect debates over domestic social issues as well as national defense. In the Senate, SASC Republicans plan this week to vote on a bill that may end up in the NDAA to block the Pentagon’s policy to pay travel costs for servicemembers or family members seeking abortions. Senate Republicans hope a vote on this bill will convince Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to drop his blockade of hundreds of routine senior military promotions. Similarly, in the House NDAA, observers should expect the House GOP majority to take aim at the Department of Defense’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, as well as the Department’s transition to more climate-friendly vehicles.

Don’t forget the appropriators:

Typically, the NDAA is the final word on federal defense policy: the NDAA sets policy and maximum funding levels, while appropriators are meant to deliver funding bills that align with the NDAA. However, this year, appropriators appear set to break from their policy-focused colleagues and veer into policy debates.  The draft House Appropriations Committee’s draft FY 2024 defense funding bill, released last week, proposes to ban paid leave or travel for servicemembers or their families to obtain abortions as well as all gender-affirming care for transgender servicemembers and all DEI efforts across the Department.  This draft appears to go further than the HASC’s earliest NDAA version on social issues and could draw ire from the HASC for crossing over into policy territory.  Politico also reported recently that House appropriators are set to float $2.5 billion in cuts to planned purchases of several different types of missiles, undercutting the Biden Administration’s plan to rapidly replenish stocks sent to Ukraine, Taiwan, and elsewhere over the next few years.  This proposal gets ahead of both chambers’ NDAA policy bills and could raise similar questions over jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, as with the Senate’s draft of the NDAA, that chamber’s draft defense funding bill will likely aim for bipartisan support. As with the NDAA, bridging the gap between both chambers’ defense funding bills will likely strain negotiators and raise chances of a short lapse in appropriations (shutdown) at the Department of Defense later this year. 

Supplemental?

Just a few weeks ago, Congress adopted the Fiscal Responsibility Act, where Congress agreed to cap both defense and non-defense spending for the next two years in exchange for avoiding an economy-crashing debt ceiling default. However, defense leaders in both the House and Senate immediately declared the new caps – which would cap FY 2024 defense at $886 billion, the same requested by the Biden Administration-- to be unacceptably low, and started looking for workarounds. HASC Chairman Mike Rogers and bipartisan Senate leaders have expressed interest in passing a “supplemental” funding bill, on top of the normal NDAA and appropriations, focused on overseas needs such as Ukraine aid and competition with China. The Biden Administration also earlier this year hinted support for a Ukraine-focused supplemental. However, so far, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has definitively rejected the idea, arguing Congress needs to adhere to its commitment reduce national spending.

We're in for another round of high intensity negotiations, similar to those around the debt ceiling just a few weeks ago. Expect to see plenty of posturing as the House and Senate appropriators work to get their priorities into the final version of the bill.