Republicans have already inserted some provisions into the bill that appear intended to stoke culture-war debates. During a drafting session last mont
Republicans have already inserted some provisions into the bill that appear intended to stoke culture-war debates. During a drafting session last month in the House Armed Services Committee, G.O.P. lawmakers added bans on drag shows on military bases and instruction on critical race theory.
But leaders in the party fear that conservatives’ demands for even more social policy dictates could rupture the bipartisan coalition they have built around the bill, which received near-unanimous approval by the armed services panel.
“We had a full, healthy debate, a series of debates,” Representative Mike D. Rogers, the chairman of the armed services panel, said on Tuesday during a Rules Committee hearing, referring to the drafting session last month. “There were several amendments that were adopted to deal with this.”
Mr. McCarthy’s small majority means he can afford to lose no more than four Republicans on any vote, giving factions of his party outsize leverage to make demands. Last month, 11 hard-right Republicans, including Mr. Roy, managed to bring the House floor to a standstill by withholding their votes for a rule governing legislative debate, in protest of the debt ceiling deal.
It was not clear whether those lawmakers or others might do the same thing with the ground rules for the defense bill, which would block it from being considered.
“I’m voting for the rule, and I’m voting for the bill,” Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said in an interview, after promising that conservative Republicans would force votes to “reverse course on the radical gender ideology at D.O.D.” Mr. Gaetz was one of the lawmakers who protested the debt ceiling deal by holding up other action on the House floor.
Republicans are unlikely to get any assistance from Democrats in bringing the defense bill to the floor if the measure caters to conservatives’ demands, and could lose critical Democratic support needed to pass the legislation if Republicans vote as a bloc to roll back the Pentagon’s policies on race, gender and abortion. In any case, party-line passage of the bill would be virtually unheard-of on Capitol Hill, signaling the erosion of a rare pillar of bipartisanship in Congress.
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