House GOP uses policy, spending bills to target ‘woke’ Pentagon

House Republicans on Thursday cleared a major spending bill that takes direct aim at so-called “woke” Pentagon policies, from drag shows on military bases to gender-transition surgery and the use of taxpayer money to facilitate abortions, setting the stage for a high-stakes culture-war clash with President Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress.

Having reclaimed the House majority in November, House Republicans have seized on the annual defense authorization bill and a companion appropriations bill to showcase their unhappiness with the Biden administration and the Pentagon.

In a closed session, the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense passed its $826 billion Pentagon spending plan for fiscal year 2024 that calls for a historic 5.2% pay raise for troops, pours billions of dollars into defense initiatives in the Pacific to counter China and ramps up the military’s role in combating the flow of opioids and fentanyl into the U.S.

Small insertions in the drafting process can have big consequences in the defense bills. The House blueprint for the defense policy bill contains a provision that would effectively nullify the long-term understanding with Russia against permanently stationing U.S. troops along its border with Eastern Europe, and a second provision that would give Alabama a boost in a simmering turf war with Colorado over the site of the headquarters of the new Space Force.

But the social and cultural policy riders attached to the policy and spending bills are by far the most controversial and all but guarantee a vicious fight with the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate, which this summer will begin marking up its own version of both bills. For Republicans, the 2024 budget process offers the most direct path to dismantle a host of liberal Pentagon policies that critics say detract from military readiness, push liberal initiatives such as mandated racial diversity, and degrade morale in the ranks at a critical moment for U.S. national security.

Indeed, Republican leaders in the House cast the legislation as an effort to redirect the Defense Department back toward its underlying goals and away from a host of left-leaning initiatives that have taken hold in recent years.

In a statement after Thursday’s vote, Defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ken Calvert said the bill directs the military to focus “on its mission — not culture wars.”

“This bill rejects many of the Biden administration’s misguided funding proposals, such as climate change initiatives, far-left social policies, and shrinking the Navy,” the California Republican said.

Republicans argue that the U.S. is at an inflection point in its increasingly antagonistic military and economic showdown with communist China, and progressive policies inside the Pentagon are distracting from the mission of building the most effective and lethal military. The effort also comes against the backdrop of broader cultural fights in and around the U.S. military, where even a plan to strip Army bases of their links to Confederate generals has again become a hot-button political issue.

With Republicans emboldened by their election wins last November, their defense spending bill would, among other items, prohibit the use of taxpayer funds for gender-transition surgery; prohibit the use of taxpayer money to promote “critical race theory”; outlaw Pentagon spending for events “that bring discredit on the military,” such as the use of drag queens as military recruiters; eliminate the military’s deputy inspector general for diversity and inclusion and extremism in the military; and take a host of other steps to unwind what they say is the military’s dangerous move to the political and social left.

The bill’s most ambitious goal is the reversal of a new Pentagon policy that provides paid time off and travel reimbursement for female troops who must travel out of the state where they are serving to get abortions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put that policy in place immediately after the Supreme Court’s reversal last year of its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which had established a national right to abortion.

Uncertain future

Not surprisingly, Democrats bashed the legislation and said it has no political future in a divided Congress. They specifically blasted the focus on social and cultural issues.

The Republican draft “contains the most extreme social policy riders I have ever seen in a defense appropriations bill. These riders make it almost impossible to gain bipartisan support,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, Minnesota Democrat and her party’s ranking member on the Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

“Our service members make immense sacrifices, along with their families, on behalf of our nation and they deserve better from Congress,” she said.

The appropriations bill will set 2024 spending levels for the Defense Department, while the House Armed Services Committee on a separate track will advance its annual National Defense Authorization Act, a massive policy package that authorizes programs, weapons, and other specific funding streams. The NDAA, one of the few bills still seen as a must-pass measure every year, has traditionally been used by both parties to push through pet policy initiatives.

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, will undertake its own funding process this summer and the two chambers will need to produce a compromise package that President Biden is willing to sign.

On the surface, it would appear Democrats are correct that many of the GOP’s wish list items will eventually fall by the wayside. But if recent history is any guide, some policy priorities that at first looked like non-starters may end up in a compromise bill.

Just last year, Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined together to pass a defense spending plan that rolled back the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The elimination of that mandate, which was responsible for the discharge of more than 8,000 troops from the ranks, came over the objections of the White House.

Despite those objections, Mr. Biden signed the bill.

In late 2020, then-President Donald Trump vetoed that year’s NDAA. Amid other objections, Mr. Trump vehemently opposed the effort to redesignate 10 Army bases that were originally named in honor of Confederate generals. Congress overrode the veto, the only successful override during Mr. Trump’s four-year term.

Earlier this month, the Army officially rechristened the famed Fort Bragg base in North Carolina as “Fort Liberty.” That name change, and others to installations across the country, is absent from defense spending legislation this time around but is very much alive on the campaign trail.

Both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence said recently they would change the name of the North Carolina base back to Fort Bragg. Mr. DeSantis called it an “iconic name,” while Mr. Pence criticized the change and said it’s another example of “political correctness” in the Pentagon.