US Senate passes defense spending bill, Nebraska senators react
By Brian Beach , Reporter Nebraska Public Media
Dec. 18, 2024, 4 p.m. ·

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The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 passed in the Senate 85-14 Wednesday.
Nebraska senators Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts both voted in favor of the bill.
The legislation authorizes $895 billion in annual military spending, including a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5% pay raise for all other military members.
It also allocates an additional $158 million for the Survivable Airborne Operations Center at Offutt Air Force Base and an additional $6 million for a training complex and professional development center at Offutt.
Fischer, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, advocated for dozens of the bill's funding provisions.
"This year, Americans voted to make America safe, strong, and prosperous. That starts with our national defense," she said. This year’s defense bill authorizes key military construction projects in Nebraska and authorizes a well-deserved pay raise for our service members."
Ricketts said he supports the increase in defense spending, and he would have liked to see an even larger budget for the military in this year’s NDAA. An amendment from the Senate Armed Services Committee would have added $25 billion to the military's topline budget, but it did not make it into the final bill.
“We've never gotten into wars because we're too strong. We've gotten into wars because we've been too weak," Ricketts said. "We need to face the challenges we've got with the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and make sure we're investing in our military to have that deterrence so that we don't have, for example, the People's Republic of China trying to take Taiwan by force."
This year's National Defense Authorization Act also includes a provision preventing the use of military health insurance coverage on gender-affirming care for children of service members. Ricketts said he supports the provision.
“I think it was completely appropriate to say the Defense Department is not going to fund experimental treatments on our children that could have long, lasting, damaging effects on them,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union is urging President Joe Biden to veto the NDAA over the provision.
Mike Zamore, the ALCU's national director of policy and government affairs, said the legislation forces service members to choose between their careers and the future of their transgender children.
"This unconscionable and unjustifiable attack on those families stands in direct contrast to President Joe Biden’s legacy of defending the civil rights of transgender Americans — including when few in his own party showed the courage to do so," he said.
The bill now heads to Biden’s desk, where he will have the opportunity to sign it into law.