Congress Faces Deadline for Keeping Government Funded

The annual National Defense Authorization Act would increase America’s total national security budget for fiscal year 2023 to $857.9 billion. House lawmakers passed the NDAA bill on Thursday with 350 votes in favor and 80 votes against it.

Republicans had pushed for the bill to end the Defense Department’s Covid-19 vaccine rule, arguing that scrapping it would help recruitment and prevent the loss of additional troops whose departures have left the U.S. military weaker.

Katherine Kuzminski, a senior fellow and program director on military, veterans and society issues for the Center for a New American Security, a military think tank, said it is hard to assess whether vaccine-related discharges have hurt the U.S. military’s capability because it is unclear whether the people who left worked in high-profile, hard-to-fill specialized positions or whether they were easily replaceable.

On recruitment, she said that younger people who are weighing military service “are less likely to make decisions regarding military recruitment based on political debates.”

Read the full story and more from The Wall Street Journal.