“With this NDAA conference report, you almost feel like a parent who’s sent their child off to summer camp and they come back like a monster.” —Congressman Gaetz
——
The House passed the annual Defense authorization bill Thursday, sending the $886 billion Pentagon policy and funding package to President Biden’s desk.
The vote was 310-118, with 45 Democrats and 73 Republicans opposing the measure. The House passed the legislation under a suspension of the rules, which means it needed a two-thirds majority.
The final version of National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), agreed to between the House and Senate, overcame opposition from hard-line conservatives who objected to its exclusion of a number of amendments passed by the House over the summer to weed out what they call “woke” Pentagon policies.
They blasted the NDAA as a watered-down compromise bill and urged the House to kill it, leading to disputes on the floor ahead of the vote.
House and Senate negotiators released the compromise version of the NDAA last week, stripping out a ban on the Defense Department’s abortion policy and a prohibition on Pentagon funding for gender-affirming care, along with other contentious provisions.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) railed against the NDAA for failing to include the GOP priorities.
“There is no justification for supporting a bill that does not materially change the direction of our military away from social engineering,” Roy said on the floor. . .
. . . Other provisions left in the NDAA restrict critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — at military academies, banned unauthorized flags on military bases, which would prohibit LGBTQ flags, and ordered the consideration of reinstating troops discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Those amendments did not go far enough for more far-right conservatives. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said the bill was “insufficient” to address what he called leftist policies at the Pentagon.
“With this NDAA conference report, you almost feel like a parent who’s sent their child off to summer camp and they come back like a monster,” Gaetz said. . . . . (read more on The Hill)
(NOTE: while supposedly banning CRT at the academies, it also has an ‘academic freedom’ provision allowing instructors to teach what they want. Go figure that one out.)
Congressman Matt Gaetz Speaks on House Floor in Opposition to FY2024 NDAA Conference Report (Press Release)
. . . . . With this NDAA Conference Report you almost feel like a parent who sent a child off to summer camp and they’ve come back a monster. That’s what we’ve done. This bill came back in far worse shape.
We had concerns over social justice warriors that were making salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at DoD. So, we put a cap on that, at three times what a private or an airman would make and we claim that is still in the bill but the Senate said so long as that social justice warrior is assigned any other responsibility, they are able to plow through that cap and waste taxpayer money that doesn’t enhance our lethality, or capability or survivability.
We have legislation to eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer at DoD because that was the fountainhead of woke bad ideas and the house receded on that position.
Many of our colleagues were concerned that when you look at our military bases or installations, they were flying flags that weren’t the Americans Flag. The LGBTQ+ flag, the Black Lives Matter flag, whatever that flag is with the pink and black triangle in it. And that desire we had to fly the American flag, flags of our service branches that was surrendered by the House of Representatives to the Senate.
We wanted a parents’ bill of rights in DoD schools so you wouldn’t get the strange material that goes into radical and race and gender ideology. That abandoned by the House of Representatives.
We also expressed a great deal of concern over the censorship that the DoD was funding through its alliances. We put in our bill a prohibition of marketing through that network that has engaged in broad scale censorship and unfortunately that was replaced with a report.
So instead of stopping the money flowing to censorship through the DoD, we asked to just be informed about it as its happening, even though we already know it’s happening. That’s why we know it’s happening.
This bill is insufficient to deal with the structural challenges that we have at the Department of Defense where they have veered substantially left.
There is good in the bill, but it does not deserve an affirmative vote this just absolutely unnecessary and uncalled extension of spying authorities that we already know has been used. . . .
. . . . But I think about the 8,600 service members who were forced to separate from our military because of an ill-conceived, now withdrawn vaccination requirement. And we were told over and over again that there would be back pay and reparations and restoration of rank for those people who were improperly told that they could not express their patriotism through military service because they didn’t want to take an experimental vaccine.
That is totally absent in this legislation. So, in communities like mine that are military-heavy, the 5% pay increase will be very welcome, but everyone in our military families knows someone who now is not able to have their job, who’s impacted their spouses, to their marriages, to their children because of the mandate. And we ought to have really taken care of those great folks. We didn’t in this bill. . . . (read more)
Congressman Jeff Duncan Votes ‘NO’ on the National Defense Authorization Act (Press Release)
As the House debated the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that is the authorization act for the United States military, Representative Jeff Duncan voted NO and released the following statement:
“My constituents did not send me to Washington to vote in favor of taxpayer-funded abortions,” said Congressman Jeff Duncan.
“I voted NO on the NDAA because I’m fighting to ensure not $1 tax dollar funds abortion, to defund all woke Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, and to ensure no tax dollars ever are used to fund drag shows.”
“The NDAA should ensure our warfighters are trained to kill the enemy, not make up preferred pronouns. It should ensure we have a fleet of planes, tanks, battleships, and drones that can suppress any evil actor that may threaten America or our way of life.
“Instead, we were told to vote for an NDAA that funds Joe Biden’s agenda to make our military woke and to make citizens pay to murder a baby through abortion.”
“Lastly, I refuse to support the NDAA’s extension of FISA to allow Biden’s FBI to continue spying on Americans without a search warrant. We need serious reforms to FISA to protect the rights of every American.
“Over the last seven years, we have seen an unprecedented set of FISA abuses against former President Donald Trump. What the FBI did to Donald Trump is emblematic of what they can do to every American unless we severely roll back the warrantless wiretapping authorities of FISA.”
“I remain committed to reining in government overreach, encroachment on your civil liberties, and attempts to treat our military like a liberal social program.”
Leave a Comment