Good Ship NDAA maneuvers steadily through congressional shoals

It’s now on the House floor and forming in the Senate committee: The National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. This week, though, will also bring some important matters forward, like the congressional baseball game. For an update on military defense and national-pastime offense,  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan.

Interview Transcript:  

Tom Temin
It’s now on the House floor and forming in the Senate Committee, the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. That is, this week though we’ll also bring some important matters forward like the congressional baseball game, an update now from Bloomberg Government, Deputy news director, Loren Duggan. And the NDAA is kind of leapfrogging through the House and Senate to the house maybe a little bit ahead. What’s the latest?

Loren Duggan
Yeah, we’re going to see a vote this week on the House floor on that legislation, pretty sweeping. And one of the must pass bills this year, where not a lot is likely to get done. This is one of the bright spots, usually, where no one wants to be the armed services chairman who doesn’t get the job done. So what we’ll see this week is probably a lengthy debate on the House floor with a lot of amendments, I think more than 1300 were submitted by Friday to weigh by the Rules Committee and potentially debate on the floor. But it’s wide ranging, of course, obviously sets defense policy and how much later they will provide through the appropriations bills, but also a number of policy issues at the Pentagon and abroad, which could be one of the sticking points, obviously.

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Tom Temin
What are some of the top policy issues that are outside of pure defense authorization?

Loren Duggan
Well, always Ukraine will come into play and whether there will be amendments around that and what to do. Obviously, we had the lengthy debate earlier this year about how much to fund and what conditions to put on it. But anytime a bill like this comes up, that’s a natural place to look for that. There’s also a lot in here for the Defense Department about improving the quality of life for service members, whether it’s a pay boost for younger troops, or are trying to find ways to attract more people into the military. That’s been one of the focuses. And it’s actually in the title of the bill, about quality of life there. And some diversity issues have come up as well, that’s been a sticking point in a lot of the bills with House Republicans in particular, looking to curtail DEI programs, things like that. And because the Defense Department has its own schools, there’s definitely a nexus there. So we’ll be looking there and just what other things may hit you right as it moves forward.

Tom Temin
Sure. And then on the Senate side, there’s just because of everything else going on in the two parties, is likely to be different, leading eventually to some tough reconciliation.

Loren Duggan
There could be. It’s worth noting that despite the partisanship in the house, the committee there approved the 57-1, with only one Democratic vote against it, that could change as the bill gets loaded up with different provisions. We’ll be looking for that final passage vote for that indication of how it can be reconciled with the Senate, where often the starting position in the Senate is a little more bipartisan, just because that’s the only way to get a bill across the floor. Much of the work in the Armed Services Committee has a secret, they do it behind closed doors, and then tell us when they’re done. So we’ll be looking to see what they’ve agreed upon as they work through that bill over the course of the week.

Tom Temin
And we did see a slice of the houses version of regular appropriations for 2025. And for the sliver of government that they have in general government work, there is significant cuts, again, proposed from the House side, is that likely what we’re going to see in the large agency appropriations work? And will that be coming out any of it this week?

Loren Duggan
Yeah, we’ll be seeing more there. So the House passed one bill last week for military construction projects, a small sliver of what DoD gets plus the Veterans Affairs Department. Veterans Affairs, there are some increases there, which is the usual, but as we get more bills that are more in the true domestic agencies will likely be seeing more cuts, as we did with Bill funding the IRS where I think there was a $2 billion cut. And as we see the bills covering the Ag department, and eventually when we get to the Labor HHS Education bill, which is all domestic, that’s where if you’re going to meet this top line number of reduction, there’s probably going to be a lot of chunks there. So we’re planning to see I think six bills move through either subcommittee or full committee over the course of this week. So a lot of action to come there in the house. Their goal is to get them all out of committee by July 10. Pretty tight, but we’ve seen them make a lot of progress so far.

Tom Temin
And they’re around yet for another few weeks, right until the July 4 break?

Loren Duggan
Well next week is going to be a little broken up because of the Juneteenth holiday. I think the Senate might be coming in around that, and the House might be actually out of town so that people can be back in their districts for that. But it is kind of a choppy summer as we saw last week. It was a short week because of D-Day. There’s a lot on the agenda between world events and conventions coming up later in the summer.

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Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Loren Dugan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And then speaking of broken up week, they do have, it’s not a bipartisan event. It’s partisan versus partisan, but maybe not quite as Ill themed and that’s the baseball game.

Loren Duggan
Yeah, they band together in a different way where the Republicans and the Democrats will take the field at Nationals Park for this annual event. It’s pretty sacred on the calendar for them to keep that and try to clear floor votes to allow it. We actually saw one subcommittee hearing for one of the appropriations bills moved two weeks into the future to make sure that everybody could get to the game who wants to go. And even if the members aren’t playing, they usually come and sit in the audience or take part in that and it’s kind of a fun little DC tradition that I always tell my interns from out of town. We’re swinging by if you want to see kind of a little slice of DC life.

Tom Temin
And there’s a few members that actually have some baseball chops?

Loren Duggan
Oh, yeah, absolutely. There’s people who either played in college or whatever. I don’t think there’s as many pros as in the past when Jim Bunting was in the Senate or something like that. But some people are really good and take it very seriously with practice and trying to keep their record going, and get as many strikeouts or hits as they can. So people take it very seriously.

Tom Temin
And getting back to more serious business, the Senate has some FERC nominees. And that’s a big deal, because obscure as FERC is, it does have a new multi 1000 page rule out there that completely changes governance and regulation of the grid. And so those nominations matter.

Loren Duggan
Absolutely. And it’s a commission that’s a five member commission with a mix of Democrats and Republicans. The folks coming in here now our were approved last week by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee with a pretty solid support. So we’ll see if they can all get over the line in the Senate this week that would fill the void and make sure that it’s got all the members that needs to do the kind of work you were talking about, but kind of odd to see all three back to back to back like that in one week. But they’re moving quickly to try to get that done as soon as possible.

Tom Temin
Right electric car charging, subsidized by one state to another is at stake here. But the vote on those nominees from the committee wasn’t totally party line.

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Loren Duggan
No it wasn’t. There was one senator, I think Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who voted against all three. And he said he was disappointed in some of the answers they’ve given. But there could be some at least bipartisanship here, when they have the votes.

Tom Temin
All right. And then the other place that is having some problems, FDIC, the workplace culture, interestingly, the Chairman said he would resign when there’s a successor, which means he’ll be here for the rest of the Biden administration. What’s going on a hearing coming up?

Loren Duggan
The House Financial Services Committee is digging into that. And they say they’re looking at both the failed leadership and the workplace culture. And as you noted, it does get pretty low marks. I think it was 25 out of 26 in a recent survey, and there’s some concerns about how harassment claims have been handled. So a lot to talk about there. And there are definitely people who would like to see Greenberg go sooner. And he lost support among Democrats, which is I think what pushed this forward different Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, where Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.) is the democratic chair there and up for re election and a pretty tight race was one of the people to come out against him and say he needs to go. So I think this is an agency that will have a lot of discussion around and this will be a concentrated look at the issues there.

Tom Temin
And there’s also a vote on IVF legislation. And that has something to say about the federal employee health benefits plan.

Loren Duggan
Right. This is the second bill in two weeks that Senate Democrats are trying to push. They’re more messaging because the dynamics been there likely won’t get across the finish line. But this one is about IVF coverage, including requiring carriers and the FEHBP to offer IVF services as part of this broader guarantee of access to IVF services.

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