New US shutdown looms as culture wars hit defense budget

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The Pentagon’s annual funding bill is set to become the center of a political firestorm after Republicans included “anti-semitic” social provisions in the law.

The bill—known as the National Defense Authorization Act—usually avoided the most bitter partisan bickering and often passed with support from both political parties.

But on Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed their version of legislation worth $886 billion, adding measures designed to curtail abortion rights, diversity training and medical care for transgender patients in the military.

Democrats are likely to retaliate by demanding the provisions be thrown out.

The latest tensions suggest that Capitol Hill is about to start a new period of the crisis, just weeks after the US came within days of a debt default amid divisions over budgetary policy and the need to raise the country’s borrowing limit.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that the bill was “an important victory for every American in this country who wants to see our military focused on our enemies overseas – not on awareness and all those ideologies that you looking in the country.” the pentagon

At the same press conference, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared: “We do not want Disneyland to train our military.”

Unless there is a quick resolution to the standoff, it risks becoming a stumbling block for Washington as it seeks to back Ukraine against a full-scale invasion by Russia and strengthen its presence in the Indo-Pacific region. moving forward with

The Pentagon is already battling a domestic political storm as Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, is blocking Senate confirmation of top military officials. Tuberville has been protesting new Department of Defense policies that facilitate abortions after the Supreme Court struck down her constitutional right to due process.

Democrats have reacted angrily to Republican attempts to link military spending to social policy demands.

“He chose a culture war over national security,” Alyssa Slotkin, a Michigan Democratic congresswoman and former Pentagon official, told the House. Democratic leader in the lower house Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement along with other party leaders, accusing Republicans of “turning a meaningful investment in our men and women in uniform into extreme and reckless legislative pleasure.”

The House bill clashes with a bipartisan defense spending bill that will be considered next week in the Senate controlled by Democrats.

Talks to resolve the differences could take several more weeks, potentially approaching the Sept. 30 deadline when funding for all federal agencies, including the Pentagon, is about to expire. The funding bill for other US federal agencies is also at risk and fears of a widespread government shutdown in October are growing.

Since striking a deal with President Joe Biden to prevent debt default in early June, McCarthy has faced opposition from the right wing of his party, leading him to take a tougher stance in this summer’s spending tussle. Is kept.

But lobbyists for defense companies still praised the defense spending legislation passed in the House as a step toward eventual passage.

“Over the past year and a half – with land wars in Europe and growing threats in the Indo-Pacific – it has become even more clear that we need to meet defense needs, leverage our technological prowess and strengthen our country’s national security innovation base. Have to strengthen. Accelerate the pace of acquisitions,” said Eric Fanning, chief executive of the Aerospace Industries Association, which represents top US defense companies.