Washington, D.C. (RELEASE) June 14th, 2024 — Congresswoman Harriet Hageman voted in favor of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (NDAA). This legislation improves servicemembers’ quality of life – highlighted by a 19.5% pay raise for junior enlisted members and expanded access to healthcare providers – while equipping our military with the resources to counter the rapidly growing threats from Communist China and restore American deterrence. It also provides much-needed oversight and crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse, saving taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

Representative Hageman stated, “This year’s NDAA strengthens our military by providing much needed pay raises and healthcare improvements for our servicemembers, countering Chinese aggression, cutting down on the waste and duplication within the DoD, and ending ‘woke’ policies that have nothing to do with defending our country. Under Joe Biden’s failed leadership, the world has become a more dangerous place. It is critical that we support our military in such precarious times and ensure that it is focused on defeating our enemies and securing our borders.”

The FY25 NDAA Improves Service Member Quality of Life:

• Boosting Compensation: Gives junior enlisted servicemembers a 19.5% pay raise, expands allowances for housing and food, and improves the cost-of-living calculation.
• Improving Housing: Boosts funding for housing maintenance accounts and strengthens oversight of military housing programs.
• Ensuring Access to Medical Care: Reduces healthcare wait times by expanding access to medical providers, especially mental health providers, and increases oversight of healthcare accessibility for servicemembers.
• Enhancing Support for Military Spouses: Makes it easier for spouses to transfer professional licenses across states and expands DoD programs that provide employment support.
• Increasing Access to Childcare: Improves access to childcare by mitigating childcare staffing shortages at DoD facilities and fully funding childcare fee assistance programs.

The FY25 NDAA Restores American Deterrence:

• Deterring Communist China:
  • Prevents Communist China’s espionage in our military, supply chain, and research institutions.
  • Reforms DoD acquisitions to expedite the fielding of innovative technologies that we need to deter Communist China’s aggression.
  • Bolsters Taiwan’s defense, supports Indo-Pacific allies, and increases funding for U.S. defense initiatives in the Indo-Pacific.
• Restoring Lethality:
  • Bases promotions on merit, ends affirmative action at service academies, and abolishes DEI bureaucracy at DoD schools.
  • Requires the DoD develop a strategy to recruit individuals previously discharged solely based on their refusal to take the COVID–19 vaccine.

• • Requires commissioned officers to be trained on the Constitution, including on the oath to it they take and on civil-military relations, separation of powers, and the domestic use of military force.

• • Prohibits the Secretary of Defense from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services.

• • Prohibits TRICARE and the DoD from furnishing gender transition surgeries and gender hormone treatments for individuals that identify as transgender.
• Securing America:
  • Fully funds the deployment of National Guard troops at the southwest border.
  • Expands authorities and increases funding for DoD counternarcotic activities.
  • Blocks DoD from using its aircraft to bring Palestinian refugees to the U.S.
• Oversight & Accountability:
  • Saves $30 billion by cutting inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, and Pentagon bureaucracy.
  • Cracks down on contractor waste by cutting $4.3 billion in programs that aren’t meeting requirements.
  • Requires the DoD to complete an audit or lose discretionary budget authority.