Last week, the Republican-controlled House passed a defense policy bill that authorizes a pay raise for troops but does little to restrict the Pentagon's diversity initiatives, abortion travel policy, and gender-manipulation procedures for service members. The $886 billion NDAA was approved by a vote of 310-118. At press time, President Joe Biden had yet to sign the measure into law.
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, questions Republican leadership in the conference committee that crafted the final bill.
"I would like to know why 817 times the House receded to the Senate on individual provisions – that's not just the social issues, that's the whole bill," she explains. "But only 481 times did the Senate recede to the House."
According to Donnelly, that discrepancy indicates how difficult it must have been for Republicans on that conference committee.
"The Democrats seem to have pretty much dominated [those deliberations]," she adds. "And even though there are a few things in there that are promising that can be built upon next year, there were some things taken out."
Donnelly says one item that was removed was a House provision dealing with prohibition of racial quotas for admission to the service academies.
"Now, if that was taken out, that appears to mean that the conference committee is okay with racial discrimination," she tells AFN. "Why did they take that out? It should have stayed in there – [but] they took it out."
House Republicans, says Donnelly, have a lot of work to do next year in order to avoid this happening again.
The Associated Press does report that Republicans did win some concessions on diversity and inclusion training in the military. For example, the bill freezes hiring for such training until a full accounting of the programming and costs is completed and reported to Congress.
But in an interview with AFN last week, a retired Air Force officer expressed disappointment the legislation didn't contain stronger language curtailing the Pentagon's "abuse of power" surrounding the military vaccine mandate that resulted in thousands being booted from the military.
