President Biden will soon sign the annual defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, after some House Republicans failed to block its passage through the lower chamber on Thursday. After passing a deeply conservative version of the NDAA in July, members came out against the final bill after it included a clean extension of warrantless surveillance. 

After a contentious fight within the House Republican conference, Speaker Johnson included in the NDAA a clean extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for collecting data from foreign terrorists or rogue actors without a court order. The statute has come under criticism in the past for its abuse against American citizens, which conservatives had hoped to change before the Christmas break.

“Only in Washington must we bring a bill to the floor so that we are able to militarily confront China while at the same time embracing the policies that make the United States more like China,” Congressman Matt Gaetz said of the legislation. “This bill is insufficient to deal with the structural challenges that we see at the Department of Defense where they have veered substantially left.”

Congressman Chip Roy said before the bill came to the floor that Americans should “make sure you let your voices be heard this morning” because “no member of Congress, D or R, should be rubberstamping a continuation of the surveillance apparatus that has enabled abusive spying.”

Another issue for conservatives was that Senator Schumer and a group of establishment Republicans in the upper chamber stripped key conservative priorities from the House-passed version of the NDAA. 

The original House bill barred the Defense Department from spending money on transgender surgeries for servicemembers and their families and prohibited drag shows on American military installations. 

The Senate also stripped out a provision that would have ended the Defense Department policy of providing paid time off and travel reimbursement for servicewomen who left states where they were stationed to get an abortion. That policy, instituted earlier this year, was the catalyst for Senator Tuberville’s ten-month-long blockade of military promotions. 

In the end, the bill passed the House by a large bipartisan margin, 310–118, with Democrats providing most of the yes votes. The Senate passed the bill on Wednesday night, 87–13. 

A group of deeply conservative and fiercely liberal senators fought against the FISA extension before the Senate finally acted. Senators Paul and Wyden — who are on opposite sides of the aisle but agree on extensive civil liberties protections — worked with their colleagues to try to make reforms before the end of the year. 

Ultimately, they and their cohort were unsuccessful in persuading Senate leadership. “That means that once again the intelligence agencies that ignore the constraints on their power will go unaddressed and unpunished, and the warrantless surveillance of Americans in violation of the Bill of Rights will continue,” Mr. Paul said. 

Supporters of the bill say it makes key investments in the American military at a time of global peril. In total, the bill will cost $886 billion, a 3 percent increase from last year, and include a more than 5 percent pay raise for servicemembers — the largest bump in 20 years. 

The NDAA is likely to be the last major piece of legislation Congress considers before the new year. Mr. Johnson, who has been on the job for just eight weeks, has punted all issues into 2024 after losing the support of key conservative members on issues like the budget and foreign aid.