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On Tuesday, by a vote of 363 to 70, the House of Representatives passed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The bill authorizes $768 billion in spending for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2022, $25 billion more than requested by President Joe Biden. The big increase split Democrats, with 51 of them voting against the bill. The bill now heads to the Senate.
The must-pass policy bill has hit several roadblocks this year, but the final version has some key initiatives and potential changes for how the Defense Department handles budget IT, acquisition requirements, and even calls for a joint zero trust strategy.
The compromise bill, worked out by leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, incorporates elements of the version that passed the House in September and the legislation approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee in July.
The NDAA that the House passed in September would have empowered special prosecutors in the services to make decisions now reserved for military commanders on whether to prosecute sexual and related offenses. The final measure does that while covering more crimes, such as murder and kidnapping, in addition to sexual crimes, and it would make sexual harassment a crime in the military.
Moreover, the special prosecutors would be more independent of the chain of command than in the original House bill. Under the final measure, commanders would have the power to convene courts-martial, but the new prosecutors’ offices would be the ones to decide whether or not to bring charges and whether to actually go to trial.
House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., told the Rules Committee on Tuesday that the military justice provision is “the most transformational thing that has been done in this committee in my 25 years of serving.”
But New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has advocated for a more far-reaching overhaul, in a statement called the outcome “a major setback on behalf of service members, women and survivors in particular.” She pledged to continue to press for a floor vote on her stand-alone bill.
Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, succeeded in stripping out a provision that would have required women to register for the draft, even though the provision had been present in both chambers’ versions of the bill.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine’s effort to repeal the 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq also did not make it into the compromise bill.
