The defense spending authorization bill that the Senate passed in June came with a controversial “Draft America’s Daughters” amendment attached. And now, while the House and Senate negotiate what form of the yearly military spending legislation to send to the president, a coalition of seventeen Republican lawmakers led by Nebraska senator Ben Sasse is urging caution.
Taking care of national security is more important than running up the score in unnecessary & divisive culture wars. pic.twitter.com/irMRyLNlu4
— Senator Ben Sasse (@SenSasse) September 12, 2016
The co-ed Selective Service amendment, which would require women as well as men to register for the draft, started out in the House’s bill. It was proposed by freshman congressman from California Duncan Hunter as a hypothetical discussion point—he opposed it all along. The House ultimately struck the language and replaced it with funding for a study of the meaning and efficacy of the draft in the modern era. The Senate’s bill, meanwhile, retained the measure.
Sasse and sixteen conservative colleagues in the Senate ask Congress to adopt the House’s more cautious approach to the contentious issue. In a letter, co-signed seventeen ways, they wrote:
