More than two-thirds of the House of Representatives — including the entire San Diego delegation — voted in favor of a record $886 billion annual defense bill on Thursday, sending it to President Biden for his signature.
The House backed the National Defense Authorization Act by 310 to 118, with more Democrats than Republicans voting in favor. The Republicans voting against cited culture war issues like access to abortion for service members and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows some domestic surveillance.
San Diego-area Democrats Sara Jacobs, Mike Levin, Scott Peters and Juan Vargas voted in favor, as did Republican Darrell Issa despite opposition by many in his party.
“The National Defense Authorization Act is fundamental to strengthening our national security and ensuring our military has the resources it needs to improve the lives of servicemembers and protect Americans,” said Levin after the vote.
But Jacobs added a word of caution regarding the 3% overall increase.
“While I’m very proud of the more than a dozen wins for San Diego, I’m deeply concerned that another year has passed without a reckoning of our ballooning defense budget,” she said. “Adding another zero at the end of our defense budget doesn’t automatically make us safer if we’re failing to meet and adapt to the changes and challenges of 21st-century warfare.”
Separate from the appropriations bills that set spending levels, the NDAA authorizes everything from pay raises for troops — this year’s will be 5.2% — to purchases of ships, ammunition and aircraft.
Because it is one of the few major pieces of legislation that becomes law every year, members of Congress use it as a vehicle for a wide range of initiatives. It is also closely watched by major defense companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other firms that receive Department of Defense contracts.
The final version includes key parts of Peters’ Smart Ship Repair Act, which supports private repair facilities on the West Coast like NASSCO in Barrio Logan.
Dave Carver, president of the General Dynamics subsidiary, said Peters’ “hard work on this year’s NDAA will help sustain our waterfront capabilities while providing increased investment and job opportunities for maintenance work here in the Navy’s largest Pacific home port.”
The final version of the NDAA left out provisions addressing divisive social issues, such as access to abortion and treatment of transgender service members, that had been included in the version passed by the Republican-majority House over the objections of Democrats, threatening to derail the legislation.
The Democratic-controlled Senate backed the NDAA, also with a strong bipartisan majority — 87 to 13 — on Wednesday.
The bill extends one measure to help Ukraine, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, through the end of 2026, authorizing $300 million for the program in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024, and the next one.
However, that figure is a tiny compared to the $61 billion in assistance for Ukraine Biden has asked Congress to approve to help Kyiv as it battles a Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
That emergency spending request is bogged down in Congress, as Republicans have refused to approve assistance for Ukraine without Democrats agreeing to a significant toughening of immigration law.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with lawmakers at the Capitol on Tuesday to make his case for the funding requested by Biden, but emerged from the meetings without Republican commitments.
Reuters contributed to this article.
