The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the National Nuclear Security Administration’s spending cap at $24.9 billion, passed the House 281-140 Wednesday.
The bill now heads to the Senate, which is still controlled by a 51-member majority of Democrats and Democratically aligned Senators in the lame duck session that will end in a matter of weeks.
President Joe Biden (D) had not said as of Wednesday evening whether he planned to sign the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which following closed-door talks over the weekend was amended to include bans on certain treatments for service members’ children who identify as transgender.
The top line authorized in the NDAA for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is roughly in line with Biden’s 2025 request for the agency and is almost $1-billion-a-year more than the $24.1 billion the agency has now under a continuing resolution that froze the agency’s spending at 2024 levels through Dec. 20.
Last week, a pair of Republican lawmakers in the House, both of whom are on the chamber’s appropriations committee, told the Monitor that another extension of 2024 budgets, to March 2024, was possible. Separately from appropriations bills, which provide funds for agencies, the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sets policy and spending limits for defense programs, including those at the NNSA.
Meanwhile, in a floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district abuts the Savannah River Site, praised the 2025 NDAA for “fully” supporting and requiring plutonium pit production at Savannah River Site and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“It’s clear that the National Nuclear Security Administration must do everything possible to restore this vital capability as quickly as possible without delay for peace through strength,” Wilson said.
The NDAA easily passed the House despite backlash from Democrats over the transgender provisions.
House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday that language added to the bill over the weekend would restrict from minor children of servicemembers some forms of medical treatments often prescribed for people who identify as a gender incongruous with their sex.
Sometimes known as gender-affirming care, these treatments broadly include opposite-sex hormones, drugs that halt the onset of puberty and cosmetic surgery, among others. The 2025 NDAA does not mention any of these treatments specifically but instead bans “treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for servicemember children who are younger than 18.
The majority of democrats voted against the bill, though 81 voted for it. Opposing the measure were 124 Democrats, with six members of the House minority not voting. Sixteen Republicans voted against the bill.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House armed services committee, was among those who voted no.
Smith praised the bill in a statement for its “improvements for housing, health care, childcare, and spousal support,” and praised House Armed Services Democrats for blocking “harmful” provisions against the “LGBTQ community, and women’s access to reproductive health care.” However, he criticized Johnson for injecting “a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills.”
“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong,” Smith said. “Speaker Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a bipartisan process.”
