The NDAA received support from 200 Republicans and 81 Democrats on its way through the chamber.
House lawmakers passed defense policy legislation on Wednesday that would give lower-level troops a significant pay raise and would prevent the military’s healthcare program from covering certain gender-transition procedures.
The House voted 281-140 on the National Defense Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025, teeing it up for a vote in the Senate and then President Joe Biden’s final approval before lawmakers go home for Christmas. The NDAA received support from 200 Republicans and 81 Democrats on its way through the chamber.
The legislation featured a provision banning TRICARE, the service members’s health insurance program, from funding transgender medical interventions for minor children of service members. Republicans almost universally oppose allowing irreversible transgender procedures for minors, especially on the taxpayer’s dime.
“Medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization may not be provided to a child under the age of 18,” the provision reads, on page 399 of the sprawling 1,800 page legislation.
The NDAA also includes a 14.5 percent pay-raise for junior service members and an across-the-board 4.5 percent salary increase for all troops. The military budget would increase by one percent, to $895 billion, a boost lower than the rate of inflation.
Representative Rich McCormick (R., Ga.) passionately supported the ban on transgender medical treatments for children of military families and told NR the military needs to be focused on being an effective fighting force.
“This has nothing to do with culture wars. It is the medical community. We’ve always thought it was wrong until recently, when we brought the culture war into medicine. Don’t think of this as being in the military. This is medicine, ” McCormick told NR in a brief interview inside the Capitol.
McCormick is a decorated Marine veteran with two decades of service, as well as a former emergency room physician. He said the military lacks the budget to fund transgender medical operations and described the medical community’s understanding of gender dysphoria as a psychological disorder.
“I want a military that’s going to survive, kill bad guys, and defend our nation. I don’t want a military focused on transgenderism. Wrong message.”
McCormick also pointed to the growing amount of medical research showing that transgender medical procedures do not bring relief to mentally-disturbed minors, who have difficulties fully consenting to what they are getting into. Internal documents from WPATH, the leading medical organization advocating for transgender medical procedures, showed the organization was aware of the experimental nature of those operations and how minors struggled to knowingly consent to them.
McCormick said he had not spoken about the issue with House Armed Services Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), who objected to the provision’s inclusion in the bill and said earlier this week that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) did not notify him of it beforehand.
Rogers does not oppose the policy itself, but said President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration would handle the issue, making it unnecessary for the NDAA to do so.
“My preference would have been that we just let the president, on January 20, deal with these,” Rogers said, “which he’s already indicated he’s going to do.”
Leading up to the vote, Johnson celebrated the ban and also touted the NDAA’s policy instructing the Pentagon to halt the creation of new positions devoted to left-wing diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology.
“We banned TRICARE from prescribing treatments that would ultimately sterilize our kids, and we gutted the DEI bureaucracy,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday.
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D., Wash.) strongly opposed the measure and accused Republicans of putting culture war issues into what is normally a bipartisan effort each year.
“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong,” Smith said in a statement ahead of the vote.
“This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills,” he said.
Despite the loud objections from Democrats, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) voted for the legislation and did not whip members to come out against it.
Representative Lisa McClain (R., Mich.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, lauded the troop pay increase and countered the notion that Republicans were making cultural issues part of the NDAA process.
“The NDAA bill is focused on giving us lethality around the world and making sure we protect ourselves,” McClain told NR inside the Capitol.
“They didn’t have any problems when they put all the woke stuff in it.”
Representative Nick LaLota (R., N.Y.), another Armed Services Committee member, is similarly pleased with the troop pay raise and said he supported the entire bill text.
“Yes, voted for the whole bill and that was included in the bill, so yes,” LaLota said.
“Happy that we’re able to pass a bill that gives more funding to our troops, especially the ones at the lowest ranks who are struggling often with food insecurity. Too many of our lowest ranking troops are on food stamps.”
Trump seized the transgender issue on the campaign trail, hitting opponent Kamala Harris for supporting “they/them” and previously advocating for taxpayer-funded transgender procedures for illegal immigrants. Those attacks proved to be an effective talking point for Trump on his way to a decisivie electoral victory against Harris this past November.
After the election, Democratic lawmaker Seth Moulton (Mass.), an Armed Services Committee member, spoke out against his party’s all-or-nothing approach to transgender issues. Party staffers and activists instantly rebuked his stance.