Defense experts were weary Wednesday of the repercussions of failure to pass the National Defense Authorization Act after President Trump mounted another veto threat late Tuesday to the must-pass legislation that guarantees everything from soldier pay raises to defense modernization programs.
“It’s a 700-page bill that’s really the minutia that keeps the wheels of the Department of Defense moving,” retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, an American Enterprise Institute defense budget analyst, told the Washington Examiner.
“Without it, a lot of those programs can come to a halt.”
Late Tuesday, President Trump tweeted a promise to veto the $740 billion bill if it did not include language related to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“If the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.
Trump and conservative commentators have said the code allows social media companies to censor right-leaning commentary. Social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter have of late taken down or annotated content they deem untrue or misleading.
The bill’s passage before year’s end guarantees soldier pay raises, retention and recruitment bonuses, and defense modernization and construction programs.
The urgency of passing the NDAA before Dec. 31 has to do with passing the bill before the session of Congress ends, explained retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation.
“It’s like an Etch A Sketch,” Spoehr told the Washington Examiner. “Once this session of Congress expires, both of these versions of the NDAA that were passed by the House and the Senate go away, it has to be re-passed again.”
Previously, Trump promised to veto the bill if it called for the renaming of Confederate bases, which was included in both the bipartisan House and Senate versions of the bill.
The chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee released a joint statement Wednesday praising the hard work of hammering out the House and Senate versions in conference committee.
“For 59 straight years, the NDAA has passed because Members of Congress and Presidents of both parties have set aside their own policy objectives and partisan preferences and put the needs of our military personnel and America’s security first,” the statement from Chairman Adam Smith of Washington and ranking member Mac Thornberry of Texas said. “The time has come to do that again.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are reportedly preparing to schedule the bill for a vote.
Trump’s calls to tie Section 230 to the last major piece of legislation he might see would have a profound impact on the Department of Defense, said the defense experts.
Spoehr said he was shocked when he heard of Trump’s insistence that language dealing with Section 230 be added to the bill.
“That was a surprise to most people,” he said. “That happens occasionally. They just stick something completely unrelated to defense in the NDAA.”
Ferrari said throwing a wrench in the NDAA passage has national security implications. Adversaries are watching.
“The Chinese, the Russians are in competition with us, and they’re moving on,” he said of the defense investments made by America’s chief adversaries.
“What they want is friction in the system, right? Because the more friction in the system, it just slows the United States down,” he said. “It takes the attention of the leadership away from dealing with the foreign policy threats and the national security threats to dealing with how the department runs.”
Spoehr said passage of the NDAA has been sacrosanct and bipartisan for decades.
“It’s almost the only authorization bill that Congress manages to pass. And so, that’s why it becomes a target for everything,” he said.
Added Ferrari: “The members of the Armed Services Committee really have, over the past decades, taken pains to keep it focused on military national security and not turn defense into a partisan issue.”
