House Passes HR 8070 – FY 2025 NDAA

This morning, the House concluded their consideration of HR 8070, the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, passing two more groups of en block amendments and passing three other stand-alone amendments. Then the House passed the bill with a near party line (6 Democrats voting aye, and 3 Republicans voting nay) vote of 217 to 199 with 15 members not voting.

The voice votes on en bloc #4 (9:31 am EDT) and #5 (9:45 am EDT) approved a total of 115 amendments. Between all five en bloc amendments the 14 (4 cybersecurity, 5 space, 3 vehicle technology and 2 UAS) amendments that I briefly discussed on Wednesday were adopted by the House.

The bill now heads to the Senate for further consideration. The Senate Armed Forces Committee was working on their version of an NDAA bill this week. Once that language and report are passed, the Senate will (sooner or later) take up HR 8070 with the first amendment to be considered will be a substitute language amendment with language from the Senate version of the bill. When that most likely more moderate authorization bill is passed in the Senate it will be sent back to the House for consideration of the revised language. The House leadership would then be forced to consider whether they were willing to use Democratic votes to pass the Senate version or insist on a conference committee to resolve the differences between the two versions. The 14 amendments discussed above could all end up in a conference bill.

The conference version of the bill would still likely require opposition votes to pass, but that would be after the November election and that would be less of a problem for Speaker Johnson. Unless, of course, if Trump is elected President and the Republican gain control of the Senate and retain control of the House. Then all bets are off.