House Democrats want the National Defense Authorization Act to put a check on the Pentagon’s power. One major obstacle to getting those proposed changes in? They are already in favor of the bill.
Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, began the marathon markup Tuesday by saying the bill was an “excellent product.” He commended the committee’s chair, Rep. Mike Rogers, with doing an “outstanding job bringing people together … to prepare us to get the text right.”
Still, there was plenty that Democrats said wasn’t right with the text on Tuesday.
Rep. Seth Moulton took a swing at President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome.
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“We are throwing upwards of $25 billion in taxpayer money to the wind, or more accurately, into space,” Moulton said. “That is dangerous, and I dare say, dumb.”
Democrats also offered three different amendments about the Signal app controversy and another attempting to block all funds to retrofit the recently acquired Qatari plane into Air Force One.
Those amendments didn’t pass, as they failed to garner Republican support.
In effect, Democrats had already conceded their leverage over the bill before the markup had even started, with many of the lawmakers on the committee expressing their support for the underlying bill. At the end of the mark up, two on the committee, Reps. Ro Khanna and Sara Jacobs, voted against moving the bill forward.
Moulton did win the support of one Republican, Rep. Don Bacon, during the debate. Bacon voted for a narrow proposal that condemns unauthorized sharing of sensitive information and ensures the Department of Defense’s leadership accepts “the appropriate consequences” of improper information handling.
“I think we should be clear, what the secretary did was wrong and he should’ve owned up to it,” Bacon told his colleagues. Ultimately, he was the only Republican to vote alongside Democrats on the amendment. It needed two Republicans to pass.
That said, Democrats appreciated his lone-wolf support. Rep. Jason Crow gave Bacon a hug and a clap on the back, thanking him for his vote.
But Bacon wasn’t on board with the more aggressive accountability amendments that Democrats proposed. That included an amendment put forward by Rep. Pat Ryan to withhold 75% of Pentagon funds until the department conducts a full review and report — delivered to Congress — of how it handles classified information.
Bacon said the restrictions on funding weren’t an appropriate channel to force the type of accountability Democrats wanted.
Sharing classified or sensitive information is already a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the defense department’s inspector general is conducting a probe into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff over their handling of this information.
Ryan said he “doesn’t have any confidence” in the investigation. He went so far as to say that the Pentagon is a “dumpster fire that continues to grow” and that Hegseth was “FUBAR,” military slang for “f***ed up beyond all recognition” and a reference that everyone in the committee room seemingly understood.
Even with the level of partisan voting in the amendment rounds, the bill still passed out of the committee with bipartisan support. That spirit of bipartisanship rendered Democrats’ amendments largely a messaging exercise.
Rep. Sara Jacobs put forward an amendment to fence off all funding appropriated for facilities, barracks and child care facilities from going toward the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
“Facilities Sustainment money authorized and appropriated for barracks and child care facilities is not being spent on border security,” Rogers said, adding that appropriated funds would have to be decided by Congress.
Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, the Defense Department’s acting comptroller, told the appropriations subcommittee on defense in early June that the administration had pulled appropriated funds. “Funding that was pulled for this year was largely in FSRM [Facilities Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization], and in this budget, we’re actually looking to plus that funding back up to backfill that for our troops and for their families,” she said.
Still, no Republicans broke ranks.
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