By Tyler Arnold
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 26, 2024 / 15:00 pm
President Joe Biden this week signed a nearly $900 billion defense spending bill despite Democratic reservations about a provision that prohibits the Department of Defense (DOD) from covering transgender drug prescriptions for minors.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 provides $895 billion in defense and military spending. The annual legislation, which often receives strong bipartisan support, passed the Senate 85-14 and the House 281-140.
“This bill provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families and includes critical authorities to support our country’s national defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security,” Biden said in a statement.
“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the act, I note that certain provisions of the act raise concerns,” the president added.
The law prohibits the DOD’s health care system TRICARE from covering puberty-blocking drugs or hormone therapies for children when prescribed to facilitate a gender transition.
Puberty blockers delay a child’s natural developments during puberty and hormone therapies give excess estrogen to boys in an effort to feminize them and excess testosterone to girls in an effort to masculinize them.
TRICARE provides health care coverage for members of the military and their families. Prior to this law, the program provided these drugs to at least several hundred children.
According to one study published by the American Public Health Association in 2023, at least 900 minors received transgender drugs in 2017 and at least 25,000 children sought treatment for gender dysphoria through TRICARE.
Adults can still receive coverage for transgender drugs through TRICARE under the law. The system already does not provide coverage for transgender surgeries.
In his statement, Biden said his administration “strongly opposes” the provision, claiming it “targets a group based on that group’s gender identity and interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children.”
“This section undermines our all-volunteer military’s ability to recruit and retain the finest fighting force the world has ever known by denying health care coverage to thousands of our service members’ children,” Biden claimed.
“No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation,” the president said.
The transgender provision was the result of a compromise bill developed through negotiations among Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the House and the Senate.
When the compromise bill was introduced, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said it “[restores] our focus on military lethality and [ends] the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors.”
Some Democrats had threatened to block the passage of the NDAA, which is essential to fund the military in the upcoming fiscal year. However, enough Democrats backed the legislation to comfortably pass the negotiated language.
Most senators voted for the final bill, with only 10 Democrats and four Republicans opposing the final language. One senator, Vice President-elect JD Vance, did not cast a vote. The majority of House Democrats opposed the final bill, but 81 members of the caucus voted in favor of the bill with the 200 Republicans who supported it.
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Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson criticized Biden for signing the bill, calling it the “first anti-LGBTQ+ federal law in almost 30 years” and claiming it “disgraces those who have sacrificed so much.”
Many Republican lawmakers also sought to include a provision that would have ended a DOD policy that provides paid leave for military members to obtain abortions and reimburses military members and their families for the costs associated with traveling to obtain an abortion. The proposed language to end this policy was ultimately not included in the compromise bill.
