Washington, DC — Today, Rep. Lucy McBath (GA-06) voted to pass H.R. 6395, the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The bill supports a military pay raise, works to ensure that our servicemembers and their families live in quality housing, improves sexual assault prevention and response programs, and provides funding for America’s common defense. 

“Our service men and women sacrifice so much to protect our country, our citizens, and our freedoms,” said McBath. “My father, brother, and nephew all served this nation in uniform, and I am committed to the unwavering support of those who defend this nation and our values.” 

Background:

The FY21 NDAA has strong provisions to take care of our troops and our military families – authorizing support for a 3.0 percent pay raise, authorizing increased funding to clean up contamination of drinking water on our military bases by PFAS chemicals, continuing to invest in improving the oversight and management of housing for military personnel and their families, , and developing several key programs to promote and enhance diversity and inclusion programs in our military.

The legislation makes improvements to sexual assault prevention and response programs:

• Includes a pilot program for the military services academies creating a special prosecutor for special victim’s offenses committed by attendees
  
  
• Safe to Report Policy: Requires the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretaries of the military departments, to prescribe regulations for a safe-to-report policy that would allow alleged victims of sexual assault who may have committed minor collateral misconduct to report sexual assault without fear of receipt of discipline for such collateral misconduct, absent aggravating circumstance. It also requires the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a process to track incidents of minor collateral misconduct that are subject to the safe-to-report policy. 
  
  
• Coordination of Support for Survivors of Sexual Trauma: Requires the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs to jointly develop, implement, and maintain a standard of coordinated care for members of the Armed Forces who are survivors of sexual trauma. 
  
  
• Requires a report on the status of investigations of alleged sex-related offenses.

The FY21 NDAA creates a Pandemic Preparedness and Resilience National Security Fund, directing $1 billion to efforts to proactively increase the country’s ability to prepare for and respond to future pandemics. 

The bill makes corrections to the paid parental leave benefit provided through the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to ensure that the FAA, Department of Veterans Affairs, and certain other civilian employees inadvertently omitted from the legislation receive the paid parental leave benefit.

The bill does not authorize an additional Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round in FY 2021.