A 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members is on its way to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law after the Senate approved the annual defense policy bill on Wednesday.
The Senate voted 85-14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, easily finalizing the sweeping legislation despite a plea from advocates and some Democrats to take out language that will ban some health care for transgender children of service members.
Under the bill, troops in the ranks of E-1 through E-4 will see a 14.5% raise next year, while all other service members will get a 4.5% pay bump.
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The 4.5% raise will be added to all service members' paychecks at the beginning of January, while the remaining 10% extra for junior enlisted troops will take effect in April.
At the urging of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during bicameral negotiations, a provision was attached to the NDAA that will prohibit Tricare from covering "medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization" for beneficiaries under 18.
While ambiguous, the language in the NDAA could mean transgender military children will lose access to hormone therapy and puberty-suppressing medications, LGBTQ+ advocates are warning.
In the House, most Democrats voted against the NDAA because of the transgender provision. But in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority, they maintained the NDAA was too important to imperil passage of the bill over the issue even though they said they oppose restricting gender-affirming health care.
"If you are a military member, you're going to see a lot to like in this bill," Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters on a conference call when asked by Military.com what he would say to service members who are parents of trangender children. "Pay raises and other quality-of-life, health care issues. So parents of a transgender child, single, married with no kids -- you're going to see things in this bill that are very, very positive for you."
Kaine also argued the provision is "pretty narrow" because it does not restrict mental health care for transgender kids or any health care for transgender service members.
Two dozen Senate Democrats filed an amendment this week seeking to have the language on transgender children taken out of the bill, but that amendment did not get a vote.
Advocates are now pressing for Biden to veto the bill over the provision, but the White House has given no indication he will do so.
"If we don't fight with every ounce of our hearts, souls and power, how will we look at our children and tell them that they will have to suffer in the name of political games?" Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America and a nonbinary Navy veteran, said at a news conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. "As we stand here, we also call upon President Biden to veto this bill should it make it to his desk. We ask him to stand on the right side of history, and we ask him to stand with us."
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