Senate Passes 2024 NDAA
UPDATE: President Biden signed the 2024 NDAA into law Friday, December 22, 2023. The article below is presereved here for archival purposes.
The Senate has passed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2024, also known as the 2024 NDAA. The House must pass its own version before sending the bill to the President’s desk for signature.
The Senate approval comes after a strong majority vote to pass the compromise version of the defense spending bill, which removed controversial, non-defense-related culture war issues shoehorned into the NDAA by a faction in the House of Representatives known as the “Freedom Caucus.”
Senate members refused to pass a previous version of the NDAA due to such culture war provisions, and a “clean” version of the NDAA was the only version of the bill that could ultimately pass the Senate.
Will the House of Representatives Pass the 2024 NDAA?
What’s to prevent fringe members of the House from muddling up the “must-pass” 2024 NDAA by reinserting problematic, non-defense-related provisions or culture war add-ons?
In this particular case, the leadership of the majority of the House took actions to ensure his side of the aisle would fall into line, pass the NDAA, and keep the government open for business into the new year.
House Leadership Tells Representatives to Fall In
Federal Times reports that the House Majority Speaker ”intends to put the NDAA on the House floor” using a “procedural mechanism that will limit the Freedom Caucus’ ability to stall proceedings on the bipartisan legislation but nonetheless require two-thirds of House lawmakers:” to vote in favor of the act.
Given the state of the House of Representatives at press time, it’s unclear whether the strategy will work, but some sources feel it’s the “first sign of leadership” in the House where not depriving troops and families of their paychecks in 2024 is concerned.
What Happens Next?
As mentioned at the start of the article, the House of Representatives must draft, pass, and submit the 2024 NDAA to be signed into law. At press time, that process was scheduled for Thursday, December 14, 2023.
If passed in something close to its current form, the 2024 NDAA is worth more than $874 billion with a proposed 5.2% pay raise for troops, more federal benefits for troops transitioning out of uniformed service and into federal employment, plus authorization for $300 million for aid to Ukraine among many other provisions.
Read more:
- Compromise Defense Budget Includes 5.2% Pay Raise For Troops
- VA Says No Holiday Delays For Prescription Drugs By Mail
About the author
Editor-in-Chief Joe Wallace is a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force and a former reporter/editor for Air Force Television News and the Pentagon Channel. His freelance work includes contract work for Motorola, VALoans.com, and Credit Karma. He is co-founder of Dim Art House in Springfield, Illinois, and spends his non-writing time as an abstract painter, independent publisher, and occasional filmmaker.
