Growing partisanship makes House defense bill a magnet for amendments

Coming full circle can be a dizzying experience, especially the second time around. That’s the sensation I got last week watching the House follow the same trajectory it took last year in processing the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

If last year’s process is a harbinger of what could happen again this year, we can expect a prolonged gestation period.

There was a time when Congress enacted its defense policy bills on time, well before the start of the new fiscal year. The House and Senate Armed Services committees carefully sifted through the administration’s budget requests for the Defense Department, held hearings, then completed debating, amending and reporting a committee bill with significant changes in funding levels and policy directions. The full House and Senate would follow the authorizing committees’ lead, making minimal changes. Any House-Senate differences would usually be quickly resolved. 

That was then and now is now. Around the turn of this century we saw evolve a more partisan Congress with the prospect looming large every two years of either or both chambers flipping party control. In the case of the more stalwart committees like Armed Services, the culture within did not change that much. But the political culture outside its doors was changing rapidly.  

To reconcile these differences, the majority leadership has increasingly relied on the House Rules Committee to allow for floor amendments that appeased various members and groups that were not happy with the committee’s product. 

Last year, the House Committee on Armed Services reported its fiscal 2024 defense authorization bill (H.R. 2670) by a vote of 58-1. The Rules Committee adopted two rules for considering the bill on the floor, making in order a total of 370 amendments, 216 by Republicans, 76 by Democrats and 78 bipartisan.  

On July 14, 2023, after numerous controversial amendments were adopted, the House passed the bill on a near party-line vote of 219-210, with only four Republicans and four Democrats breaking ranks. On July 27 the Senate passed its authorization bill, 86-11, then substituted its provisions into the House bill for the purpose of going to conference, the conference committee did not convene until mid-September.

It wasn’t until Dec. 7 that the conferees came to agreement. Senate conferees had stood firm against retaining most of the House add-ons. The Senate agreed to the conference report on Dec. 13, 87-13. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), not sure of Rules Committee votes, brought the measure to the floor the next day under a suspension of the rules, angering his more conservative colleagues. Nevertheless, it passed, 310-118, some 23 votes more than the two-thirds needed under suspension. 

This year, the House Armed Services Committee reported its defense bill by a vote of 57-1. Nearly 1,400 amendments were filed with the Rules Committee. The committee made in order 350 amendments for floor consideration. Roughly 55 percent of the amendments were Republican, 21 percent Democrat and 24 percent bipartisan.  

The bill covered such a wide and disparate range of subjects that almost any amendment would be considered germane. The bill even had a more expansive title than usual: “The Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025.” As was the case last year, the bill was a veritable mega-magnet for social and cultural issues, causes and grievances.

If you are wondering how the House ever hoped to process the bill in just three days last week, the answer is simple, yet complex. The special rule gave Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), authority to offer amendments en bloc — that is, to combine them into omnibus packages. He offered a total of 319 amendments in five such blocks. 

The House debated each block for 40 minutes. All five were adopted by voice votes. The remaining amendments were considered individually and debated for 10 minutes each. The House adopted 22 and rejected 11. All told, there were 26 roll call votes, including another almost party-line vote on final passage, 217-199.

The House and Senate can ill-afford extensive negotiations on the defense authorization bill this year, given the truncated election year schedule. The 12 regular appropriations bills are already wending their way to the House floor.

Whether Johnson can pull this off without again antagonizing his GOP colleagues will tell us a lot both about the future of his speakership and whether his party will still control the House next year. To complete the geometric metaphor I began with, “Going in circles gets you nowhere.”

Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as chief of staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018). The views expressed are not necessarily those of any organization, agency, or member of Congress.