Johnson brings defense chops to upcoming spending fight

New Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has spent the last couple years on the House Armed Services Committee, experience that will influence his handling of the upcoming fight with the Senate over the annual Defense spending bill. 

While Johnson’s unique perspective may help in moving forward the immense, $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the must-pass legislation faces a series of hurdles and a wide chasm with the Senate. The current House bill contains a series of GOP-backed culture war provisions, which Johnson has supported, that are dead on arrival in the upper chamber.

Still, lawmakers this week expressed optimism over the bill’s chances, including two senior members of the House Armed Services Committee.

“I just talked to [Johnson] about 30 minutes ago. He’s committed to make sure we get the NDAA done,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) told attendees at a Politico defense event Tuesday.

Wittman, the chair of the committee’s Tactical Air and Land Forces panel, said the new Speaker “understands what he has to balance there” in the interest of the GOP, as well as what has to be done to get the NDAA through the House and the Senate.

And Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the Armed Services seapower subcommittee, said the Speaker has “the muscle memory of voting for bipartisan NDAAs.”

“I’m hopeful, anyway, that that is gonna stick with him and make sure that we continue the winning streak for NDAA,” Courtney added, referring to the fact the bill has passed annually for 61 consecutive years. 

Johnson, who was a lawyer before joining the House in 2017, has served on the House Armed Services Committee since 2021, sitting on the readiness and seapower subcommittees

While in Congress, he voted for the final passage for every NDAA, including voting to override then-President Trump’s veto of the legislation for fiscal 2021 — an issue that arose over its rule to remove Confederate names from military bases.

But the task of overseeing a final version of the bill to send to President Biden’s desk is far from simple. 

The House’s version of the NDAA, miles apart from the Senate’s, is packed with provisions restricting the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, cutting medical care for transgender troops and ending various diversity programs.

Johnson, who in the past has sought wins on social issues that affect service members, must help craft a compromise bill that satisfies both the Republican-led House that pushed forward such culture war provisions and the Democrat-controlled Senate that has balked at their inclusion in the legislation. 

Among the most controversial items is a rule that would block the Pentagon’s new policy that covers travel costs for military members who seek abortions out of state from where they are based, a proposal that the conservative Johnson co-sponsored.

The Speaker also joined Republican colleagues in opposing Ukraine aid, voting in favor of amendments to the NDAA that would have struck Ukraine funding from the legislation, amendments that did not pass. 

Insertions that did make their way into the bill include one that bars funding for surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops and others that limit Pentagon programs aimed at diversity, equality and inclusion — efforts Johnson also supported.

Such provisions turned the normally bipartisan annual affair into a near-party-line vote when Republicans passed the House version of the bill earlier this year.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in July that many of the items the House GOP included in their legislation had little chance of being included in a final version. 

“They are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing. The contrast is glaring,” Schumer said at the time.

A final bill will need to be nailed down by the time members leave for Christmas, giving lawmakers a little more than a month to hash out their differences. Informal talks have been going on for months, though the Senate has yet to vote to formally enter negotiations with the House.

Provisions related to abortion and other culture issues are already expected to be watered down, tilting the bill in the Senate’s direction.

This week, Wittman said that House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) plans to make sure House and Senate lawmakers in charge of negotiating a final bill are broken up into smaller groups “to talk about some of the thornier issues to make sure we’re able to work through those.”

Another big help is that Johnson does not appear to be duty-bound to those on the GOP’s far right, making him easier to work with than his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), according to House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.).

“One thing that Mike Johnson understands is he doesn’t just have to appease those 30 or 35 members who are the most extreme right wing of his caucus,” said Smith, who also spoke at the defense event Tuesday. “He has to govern effectively for the American people. That means working with a wide variety of people.”

For his part, Johnson has pledged to pass a House-Senate compromise NDAA before year’s end. 

In a letter to Republicans released ahead of his election to speaker in October, Johnson mapped out an ambitious legislative schedule that includes passing the bill in December.