House Passes Defense Policy Bill With Transgender, Diversity Restrictions

The House on Wednesday passed a $892.6 billion defense policy bill that would enhance military readiness and raise pay for American troops, while banning gender-affirming care for members of the military and rejecting efforts to protect access to abortion care for service members.

The 231-to-196 vote, mostly along party lines, reflected how Republicans in Congress have transformed the annual Pentagon policy measure, once an overwhelmingly popular bill, into a vehicle for conservative social policy dictates. For the third consecutive year, Republicans attached new restrictions to block diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a range of climate restrictions, and an increase in the flow of decommissioned military weapons into a civilian firearms program — alienating even Democrats who had initially supported it.

The bill’s stated aim was to streamline and modernize how the Pentagon identifies and fills military needs, including through research, budgeting, contracting, manufacturing and delivery. Republicans and Democrats in Congress alike have criticized that process, which has also exasperated defense industry players.

“The Pentagon’s current acquisition process is failing our warfighters,” Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said ahead of the bill’s passage. “It can take 10 years between identifying a need and delivering the capability to the war fighter. By that time, the threat has changed, the costs have ballooned and the solution is outdated.”

The measure includes provisions that would speed approval of defense contractors’ proposals, which can often take more than a year, to as little as 90 days. It would authorize $142 billion for the research, development and testing of new defense technology.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee, said the measure “puts us on better footing for meeting a host of growing threats and challenges.”

Both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Smith also praised quality-of-life measures, including a 3.8 percent pay increase for all service members and boosting the monthly payment some members of the military receive when a deployment results in a lengthy separation from their family or dependents.

But ultimately, Mr. Smith voted against the final version of the bill, lamenting the addition of divisive policy restrictions that he said had made it impossible for him and other Democrats to support it.

“All manner of different issues that are pure culture-war, partisan issues were allowed,” Mr. Smith said. “Beneath all of that is a really good bill.”

Despite the partisan nature of the final legislation, it included an effort backed by conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats alike to claw back Congress’s war powers after decades in which the executive branch has asserted broad authority to conduct military operations without seeking lawmakers’ approval.

The measure would repeal a pair of decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, which have subsequently been used to justify a wide range of military operations by presidents in both parties.

Recent military action in Iran, the Caribbean and elsewhere without consultation with Congress has reignited the debate over the scope of presidential war powers and emboldened lawmakers to reassert congressional authority.

President Trump “launched strikes on Iran without congressional authorization and right now he’s weighing military strikes on cartels in Venezuela and hasn’t sought congressional authorization,” Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California, said ahead of the vote. “This body should not sit idly by while the president makes a mockery of the Constitution and our laws.”

But while Republicans and Democrats both praised measures in the bill that they said would improve the Pentagon’s ability to carry out defense missions and strengthen the military, much of the debate was consumed by a contentious back-and-forth over a handful of conservative social policy restrictions inserted by the G.O.P. in votes that unfolded mostly along party lines.

Some of them targeted transgender members of the military and their families, in line with an effort by the Trump administration to remove transgender troops from the military. Representatives Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, both Republicans from South Carolina, won adoption of a range of bans on gender-affirming care and bathroom access. One would restrict options on a range of forms across the Department of Defense to include only two options for gender: male and female.

Using bigoted language and a wide range of slurs, Ms. Mace unleashed a barrage of attacks on the transgender community during remarks on the House floor, characterizing them as “weirdos” and “freaks” who are “mentally deranged.”

Democrats condemned them as a distraction from the bill’s objective of supporting military members and their families to better carry out their work.

“Like any parent, if a service member’s child can’t get the care they need they will be distracted from their mission,” Ms. Jacobs said on the House floor. “So ultimately this ban will hurt our military readiness and likely lead service members to leave the military.”

Despite a groundswell of Republican opposition to providing military assistance to Ukraine, the defense policy bill would authorize $400 million for the Pentagon’s Ukraine security assistance initiative. And the House defeated a proposal from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, to slash funding for the country, with Republicans and Democrats alike voting in opposition.

Lawmakers also added a requirement that the Pentagon report to Congress if the administration planned to cancel or suspend military aid to Ukraine that Congress has approved. That appeared to be an effort to reassert oversight authority after the Defense Department moved over the summer to suspend shipments of aid to Ukraine without notifying lawmakers.

The defense measure also includes an unrelated provision that would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing its own central bank digital currency, something conservatives demanded earlier this year in exchange for their support of a related package of cryptocurrency legislation. Right-wing lawmakers maintained that a government-issued cryptocurrency would expose users to a range of privacy violations.

The Senate last week began considering its version of the Pentagon policy bill, which so far has steered clear of the conservative policy riders included in the House measure. It is expected to complete the measure in the coming days, and lawmakers in the two chambers must then reconcile their versions to produce a final product that needs final approval by both chambers.