The Pentagon is seen during a military flyover on May 2, 2020. The Pentagon is seen during a military flyover on May 2, 2020. The U.S. Senate on Dec. 18, 2024 cleared the annual defense authorization bill. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Ned T. Johnston/Released)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday cleared a national defense authorization bill celebrated for troop pay raises but condemned by Democrats for targeting transgender children in military families, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Senators voted 83-12, with five not voting, to approve the $884.9 billion National Defense Authorization Act that received bipartisan praise for the pay bump, upgrades to military housing and investments in artificial intelligence and other advanced technology.
But the annual legislation drew ire this year from Democrats for a provision banning the military’s health program from covering certain treatments for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, defined by doctors as the mismatch between a person’s sex assigned at birth and the gender they experience in everyday life.
All Democrats present for the Dec. 11 U.S. House vote opposed the defense package, which passed along party lines under the Republican majority.
The White House has not released its position on the bill, as it generally does with legislation ready for the president’s signature.
Wednesday’s Senate vote marks the 64th year in a row Congress has passed the defense package, a historically bipartisan process.
This year’s vote breakdown did not stray far from the Senate tallies for the defense legislation over the last five years.
The bill does not release funding for the Pentagon, but rather it outlines how any defense money will be spent. Congress will need to approve allocation of dollars in separate appropriations legislation.
Gender care
A short section tucked in the 1,800-page policy roadmap for 2025 bans military TRICARE health insurance coverage for service members’ children who seek “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization.”
Democrats maintain the ban will affect thousands of military families, though the Pentagon has declined to comment on any figures. The Pentagon also did not respond to a second inquiry from States Newsroom about whether the Defense Department tracks numbers of service members’ transgender children.
Treatment for gender dysphoria can include mental health measures, hormone therapy and surgery.
The provision comes as more than 20 states have banned or limited gender-affirming care for transgender minors, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The UCLA School of Law Williams Institute found that 113,900 youths aged 13 to 17 live in states that ban such treatments.
While the bill does not specifically delineate the types of interventions it intends to prohibit, a publicly available summary from the GOP-led House Armed Services Committee named “hormones and puberty blockers.” The summary, titled “Restoring the Focus of Our Military on Lethality,” also highlighted language in the legislation to ban certain race-related education in Defense institutions and a freeze on any Pentagon diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, hiring.
Sen. Jack Reed, chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said he shared his Democratic colleagues’ frustrations and characterized the ban on care coverage for transgender youth, which he voted against during the committee process, as “misguided.”
“Ultimately, though, we have before us a very strong National Defense Authorization Act. I am confident it will provide the Department of Defense and our military men and women with the resources they need to meet and defeat the national security threats we face now,” Reed, of Rhode Island, said on the floor ahead of the vote.
Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee’s ranking member, praised the “immense accomplishments” in the defense package, including the 4.5% pay bump for all service members, plus an extra 10% raise for the most junior enlisted troops.
“We made investments in Junior ROTC and recruitment capabilities, both of which will help solve the military’s manpower crisis. This bill stops the Department of Defense from paying for puberty blockers and hormone therapies for children. We blocked the teaching of critical race theory in military programming, and we froze diversity equity and inclusion hiring,” the Mississippi Republican said before voting commenced.
‘Cheap political points’
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Senate, said on the floor Tuesday that for the first time in her 12 years in the Senate, she would oppose the annual defense bill.
The Wisconsin Democrat, who voted against the bill Wednesday, said the commitment to the historically bipartisan exercise was “broken because some Republicans decided that gutting the rights of our service members to score cheap political points was more worthy.”
“Some folks estimate that this will impact between 6,000 and 7,000 families in the military. I, for one, trust these service members and their families to make their own decisions about health care without politicians butting in,” she continued.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked to withdraw Baldwin’s amendment to strip the language from the legislation. The request was approved immediately before Wednesday’s vote without a challenge. The leader’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the withdrawn amendment.
Twenty Democratic senators initially co-sponsored the amendment. They include Alex Padilla of California, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota, Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Patty Murray of Washington.
Kim, a former U.S. representative who was sworn in as a senator on Dec. 9, said House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence on the transgender provision in the bill “undermines trust in negotiations and sets a dangerous precedent for what is widely considered the last true space of traditional bipartisan legislation.”
“We are putting politics into a bill where it simply does not belong,” Kim said on the floor Tuesday.
Kim ultimately voted in support of the bill.
The chair of the GOP-led House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, told Capitol Hill reporters last week that Johnson did not consult him before keeping the language in the final version.