“Senate Passes Defense Bill – Bye Bye culture wars?

On Tuesday, December 17th, the United States Senate passed a defense policy bill that does not contain the Republican-endorsed culture war demands, signaling a step towards bipartisan cooperation. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 was approved with an 84-13 vote in the Senate. This act authorized the federal government to spend defense and military funds at a total of $740.5 billion. The 2020 NDAA was considered an unusually politically contentious as many provisions included in the bill were proposed by Congress that members of the Republican Party have pushed for including. Though to contain most of their demands, many of the proposed culture war amendments were left out of bill. For instance, a move by Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and a group of other lawmakers that would have had changed the naming policy of military locations honoring Confederate military generals was struck out from the NDAA. Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, argued that those concerns need to be separately debated instead of being linked to funds for the armed forces and the defense of the United States of America. He further stated that “It’s one of the few pieces of legislation that has enormous bipartisan support Every now and then, we take an issue that we really care about and instead of using that enthusiasm to pass the bill that people want us to pass, we turn it into a culture war”. The NDAA was last modified in 2017 and 2019, both times attracted to the controversy that surrounded the different regulations that members of both parties wanted to either approve or veto. This year’s NDAA Included many important provisions, such as the establishment of paid family leave for federal employees, as well as the authorization for future military space force. Notably, the bill also called for an additional $1 billion in military funding for the European Deterrence Initiative, now called ‘European Deterrence Initiative Plus’. This initiative was established in 2014 and provides for military support in the form of training, equipment and military exercises to NATO allies, along with several non-NATO countries like Ukraine and Georgia. This bill marks a step towards a more bipartisan climate for legislation, as this bill was largely unfazed by the ongoing ‘culture wars’ taking place in the House and Senate chambers. It is void of most of the amendments that had the potential to divide both sharpeners along political lines, and instead focuses on the more tangible and nonpartisan provisions necessary for the defense of the nation.