The Senate has now passed the National Defense Authorization Act. This is the bill that sets the spending level for the Defense Department and the Military.
The vote in the Senate was overwhelmingly bipartisan; the final Senate vote was 89–10. Last week the NDAA passed the House last week again with overwhelmingly bipartisan support. The vote was 363- 70.
This is a big bill that authorizes more than 768 billion dollars of spending next year. What the House and Senate passed is 25 billion more than President Biden had requested.
This years budget for NDAA includes things like.
- A major overhaul on how the Military prosecutes specific types of crimes including sexual assault.
- Also provides for a multi year independent commission to examine the 20 years the U.S. was in Afghanistan.
- The withdraw from Afghanistan that happened this year.
- It also looks at extremism in our own Military.
A provision to allow women to enter the draft was stripped out of the bill before it was passed.
