Space Guard, No-Cost Dental Approved in Final House NDAA

Language to create a Space National Guard and provide Guardsmen and Reservists with no-cost dental care are in the full House’s version of the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., is the original sponsor of the Space Guard provision. The House also included it last year, but it failed to make it through the conference committee, where House and Senate negotiators settle differences between their respective versions of the legislation.

The Space Guard was not in the Senate Armed Service Committee’s version of the fiscal 2023 NDAA, which has not yet been considered by the full Senate.

Both chambers are in recess until September.

The dental-care language comes from a bill introduced in early June by Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Rep. Trent Kelly, R- Miss., at the behest of NGAUS. Like the Space Guard provision, the SASC bill doesn’t include no-cost dental care for reserve-component members.

Differences between the two final versions of the House and Senate NDAA must be reconciled before the legislation can reach the president.

The full House passed its version July 14 after sorting through scores of amendments. 

It includes nearly $840 billion in defense spending, or roughly $37 billion more than President Joe Biden requested. 

Consideration of the NDAA began July 12 in the House Rules Committee, where 1,219 proposed amendments were whittled down to 650 the full House considered.

The record-setting number wasn’t a good precedent, said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the House Armed Services Committee chairman.

“We don’t need 1,200 amendments, and past a certain point, it becomes more difficult to do this,” Smith said during committee hearing. “There are going to be amendments that we’re not going to let in here simply because we don’t have time to go through them.”

Most of the amendments included in the final bill were passed in one large group, including a provision requiring disclosure of lead testing results completed by the Defense Department in “covered areas,” such as a Guard readiness center.

One amendment receiving floor debate was a provision to include the D.C. National Guard Home Rule Act in the NDAA. It would give the mayor of the District of Columbia authority over the D.C. Guard, similar to what governors have over the Guard in the states.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., introduced the original legislation. A similar provision was in the House’s fiscal 2022 NDAA, but it was stripped from the final bill in the conference committee.