Armed Services panel approves defense bill after marathon markup

Mark Satter, CQ-Roll Call on Jul 16, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services Committee approved, 55-2, its version of the annual Pentagon policy bill late Tuesday night after a nearly 14-hour markup during which lawmakers waded through hundreds of amendments on topics including Ukraine, abortion rights and the renaming of military bases, among other contentious issues.

Only California Democrats Ro Khanna and Sara Jacobs voted against the measure.

Still, the favorable reporting of the bill was overwhelmingly bipartisan, bucking a trend in which Democrats had unanimously opposed Pentagon policy bills in recent years over their inclusion of partisan policy riders. The legislation has been enacted into law for 64 consecutive years.

Mixed support for Ukraine

Lawmakers agreed, 47-10, to an amendment offered by panel ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., that would allow for increased funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative from $300 million to $400 million.

The bipartisan endorsement followed this week’s announcement from President Donald Trump that the U.S. would supply Ukraine with more weapons in its war with Russia and levy biting sanctions if Moscow did not enter into peace talks with Ukraine within 50 days.

But the panel did not agree to other Ukraine-related amendments offered by Smith, including one that would prohibit the United States from using USAI funds to replenish Defense Department weapons stocks, and another that would prohibit the U.S. from clawing back defense wares bound for Europe.

Authorizers also defeated, 15-42, an amendment offered by Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, that would have banned the U.S. from producing or exporting cluster munitions, ordnance that critics say have a high “dud” rate and indiscriminately harm civilians for years after they are dropped.

Chairman Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., joined Smith in opposing the amendment because it would have prohibited the United States from supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine, which, according to the duo, Kyiv badly needs in its fight against Russia.

Renaming revisited

In a break with their fellow Republicans, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Derek Schmidt of Kansas voted with Democrats to agree, 29-28, to an amendment offered by Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., that would prohibit the contravention or reversal of the recommendations of the commission in charge of renaming military bases that honor Confederate figures.

The commission was created by the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with bipartisan support and renamed military installations, like Fort Bragg, that honored Confederate generals. But the Trump administration has reversed many of the commission’s actions, replacing the names to honor servicemembers whose surnames match the names of the Confederate leaders but were not Confederates themselves.

Bacon called the administration’s actions “a finger in the eye of Congress.”

“We debated this in 2020, and some folks in here voted yes, some voted no. But it was debated in a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, and it passed. So it’s a bipartisan bill, and then the president vetoed it, not just for this reason, and it was overridden,” Bacon said.

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a member of the Armed Services Committee and of the base renaming commission, said the commission went to great lengths to work with the communities in which the installations are located to find suitable replacement names.

“I understand some people don’t like the end result. But the commission followed the law and did their job,” he said.

Scott did not vote in favor of the amendment but said he assumed that the next Democrat president would likely reverse the name changes. Scott lamented that the dynamic had politicized the names of military installations, a trend that could be irreversible.

Republicans also defeated, 27-30, an amendment offered by Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., that would have repealed the current ban on abortions in the military health system except for cases of rape, incest or if the woman’s life is endangered.

Sherrill called the ban “draconian” and said it endangered servicemembers in states with restrictive abortion laws who might not have access to reproductive health care.

Earlier, the committee quickly approved all seven portions of the bill produced by the panel’s subcommittees, and debates over hot-button issues, including diversity and border security, produced little bipartisan agreement.

The sprawling, must-pass piece of legislation must now be considered by the full House, where additional amendments are possible. But given the packed congressional schedule, it is likely that further consideration of the bill will be postponed until after the August recess.