House strengthens NDAA, Senate version includes egregious Dem provisions
Last week, the House passed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 and included an important amendment to rescind the Secretary of Defense’s memo providing taxpayer funding for abortion travel. The NDAA specifies the annual budget and expenditures of the Department of Defense (DoD) and has been renewed annually since 1961. It contains important provisions that would strengthen the U.S. military against China with modest procurement authorities for war ships, aircraft, munitions, and other weapons systems that will soon be necessary to the Indo-Pacific. But the bill should go further by including language to curtail and restrict American capital from freely flowing into China to prevent the CCP from snatching it for their own uses. The bill also contains an unfunded mandate for universal in vitro fertilization (IVF) coverage for servicemembers and their dependents, costing approximately $1 billion annually. As written, this provision does not have clear guardrails and would either harm military medical readiness or result in cuts to providers who participate in the TRICARE network which provides healthcare to active duty service members and their family. The version introduced last week was on the right path, but omitted language that would undo the abortion memo from DoD Secretary Lloyd Austin which illegally subsidizes special travel and paid leave for elective abortions. Fortunately, Representative Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas.) introduced an amendment to the NDAA to rescind this memo and thanks to the robust support of the grassroots, the House passed it and incorporated the amendment into the NDAA. The American people agree that abortions should not be funded by taxpayers. The House passed the NDAA with Van Duyne’s amendment and now it’s up to the Senate to do the same. This week, the Senate released its version of the NDAA that includes typically egregious Democrat provisions that treat the military as a social institution rather than a warfighting organization. Conservatives must fight to keep the abortion priority included in the final version of the bill during the negotiation process between the two chambers.
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