Tampons and Tulips? Lawmakers Pitch 650 Amendments to Annual Defense Bill
Other proposed changes to the House defense authorization act would delay new ICBMs and hasten warship retirements.
JACQUELINE FELDSCHER | JULY 13, 2022 04:47 PM ET
DEFENSE BUDGET CONGRESS WHITE HOUSE
First, we had freedom fries. Now, we might have freedom flowers.
The House on Wednesday began considering this year’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets various aspects of Pentagon policy. The legislation addresses many weighty issues, from budget toplines to how many airplanes and ships the services buy, but because it’s typically among a handful of “must-pass” bills in a given year, lawmakers often try to attach unrelated or odd proposals.
The House Rules Committee this week decided that the House would consider 650 of the more than 1,200 amendments that were submitted. One is a bipartisan proposal from Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wa., that would require all flowers displayed in the White House, State Department, and Defense Department to be grown in the United States.
“A cut flower or a cut green may not be officially displayed in any public area of a building of the Executive Office of the President, of the Department of State, or of the Department of Defense that is in a state of the United States or in the District of Columbia, unless the cut flower or cut green is produced in the United States,” the amendment says.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/07/tampons-and-tulips-lawmakers-pitch-650-amendments-annual-defense-bill/374205/
