Bill authorizes a 3.8% pay raise for troops while forcing more transparency from the Pentagon and putting limits on efforts to pull the U.S. military from Europe and South Korea.
The Senate on Wednesday passed a $901 billion defense policy bill authorizing a 3.8% pay raise for troops while forcing more transparency from the Pentagon and putting limits on efforts to pull the U.S. military from Europe and South Korea.
The 77-20 vote sends the annual bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, to President Donald Trump for his signature. The legislation authorizes $8 billion above the Trump administration’s request for national security spending and still needs to be funded by a defense appropriations bill.
Lawmakers used the legislation to push back against Trump’s moves to disengage from Europe, notably authorizing $400 million for each of the next two years for a Ukraine security assistance program the administration did not want to continue.
The bill also curbs the administration’s ability to reduce the number of troops in Europe below 76,000 or to give up U.S. command of NATO’s top officer position in Europe unless Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth certifies to Congress that such actions aligned with national security interests and were made with the consultation of NATO allies.
Similar restrictions are in place for pulling back the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula below 28,500 troops.
“To remain a force for peace and stability in these areas, we must have effective force levels, and this legislation provides for that,” said Sen. Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The provisions reflect bipartisan backlash to the Pentagon’s recent decision to bring home about 700 troops deployed in Germany, Romania and Poland. Lawmakers have also expressed concern that Trump could draw down the U.S. military presence in South Korea, which he has said should pay more to host American troops.
The legislation also reflected frustration on Capitol Hill with the way the Pentagon communicates with lawmakers, particularly regarding the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed nearly 100 people since September. Hegseth said Tuesday that the Pentagon will not publicly release the full, unedited video of a divisive follow-up strike on a vessel on Sept. 2, but a provision in the bill withholds 25% of his travel budget until he turns over the orders behind the boat bombing campaign as well as unedited videos of the strikes to the Armed Services Committees.
“This NDAA compels the secretary of defense to follow the law and submit to Congress a number of reports that he has deliberately withheld,” said Reed, adding that the oversight provisions are a “ratification of our constitutional duties to raise an army, to supervise an army, and to ensure that the laws of the United States are followed scrupulously.”
Congress in the legislation is also asserting its authority to declare war by repealing two decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2002. The White House has supported the repeals — a 2001 post 9/11 authorization continues to underpin nearly all U.S. counterterrorism operations around the world.
Service members will see a 3.8% pay bump under the legislation, as requested by the Trump administration. The bill also increases the family separation allowance for deployed service members from $250 to $300 and authorizes more than $1.5 billion in new construction of barracks, dormitories, housing and childcare centers.
The legislation also authorizes $26 billion in shipbuilding funding, $38 billion for aircraft and $25 billion to ramp up production of munitions.
A core focus of the bill is speeding up and reforming the way the Pentagon purchases weapons and supplies. Sen. Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the bill delivers the most sweeping upgrades to the Pentagon’s business practices in 60 years.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the legislation “takes dozens of burdensome rules and laws off the books, streamlines the buying and innovations processes and ensures more American businesses will be able to contribute to America’s arsenal.”
The passage of the bill marks the end of monthslong negotiations between the House and Senate. The final version of the bill stripped out most of the conservative social policy mandates the House had passed but retained provisions banning diversity programs at the Pentagon as well as transgender athletes in women’s sports at the military academies.
Also left out of the bill were provisions that would have provided Tricare coverage of in vitro fertilization for military families and reversed Hegseth’s decision to undo a Congress-directed effort to change the names of Army bases that had honored Confederate leaders.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., intervened for a second year in a row to remove the IVF measure, which had been supported by both chambers. Johnson and other conservatives have expressed concern that the IVF process involves destroying embryos, which they view as people.
Bipartisan objections remained Wednesday over a provision kept from the House that would allow military aircraft to get a waiver to fly through Washington airspace without using location-transmitting technology, as was the case when an Army helicopter collided with an airliner on Jan. 29.
The Senate later on Wednesday passed separate legislation to nullify that provision of the defense bill, requiring military aircraft to broadcast their locations when flying near busy airports — with limited exceptions. It is unclear when the House will take up the measure.
- Security