Representative Tenney Tells Newsmax that Large NDAA Will Encounter Challenges in the House

The National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, passed by the Senate to authorize a record $886 billion in annual military spending will have “some issues coming back to the House,” Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., said on Newsmax on Thursday.

“There’s a lot to like about it, and there’s some things that we don’t like about it, but I’m still undecided as to how I’m going to vote for it because it is so important that we fund our military, especially now where we are in the world with a terrible president who projects weakness and who has bad policies,” she said on “Wake Up America.” “You hate to give him any money to do anything, but our military has to do its job, regardless of a bad commander-in-chief.”

The NDAA, which is separate from appropriations bills setting government spending levels, authorizes troop pay raises as well as purchases of ships, ammunition, and aircraft. It also includes measures to help Ukraine and to push back against China.

However, the House version of the legislation included provisions on social issues such as abortion access and treatment of transgender service members, but the Senate version does not include those items.

Tenney said the best solution to dealing with the military and social issues is to “elect a good president” who is strong on national issues and the border, adding that that person is former President Donald Trump.

“A lot of these policies could be changed if we had a different secretary of defense and better people serving our military in terms of appointments coming from the executive branch,” said Tenney.

Meanwhile, there is a “very slim majority” of Republicans in the House, so “there’s not a lot we can negotiate with,” said Tenney.

The congresswoman said that a vote will need to come up soon on the NDAA, but it won’t happen before Christmas, as lawmakers are having their last day in session Thursday before leaving for three weeks on holiday recess.

“The problem with these NDAAs is, first of all, a continuing resolution only hurts our troops,” Tenney said. “It means we can’t invest in the latest and best technology at all … we hope that vote comes up sooner rather than later. It’s not going to happen today, and this is our last day in session, so it’ll be the early part of next year.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans said Wednesday there will be a vote to ban critical race theory in the military, including at the service academies, and Tenney said it will “absolutely” pass.

“The other thing to remember about some of the other social issues that have been improperly injected into our National Defense Authorization Act, many of these things have been discontinued by the new bill,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not doing them. They’re not explicitly banned. That’s something we could do with a new Republican president.”

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