Legislative Update

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) makes historic policy changes that will benefit our service members and their families, while investing in future capabilities for the United States to confront unprecedented challenges facing our nation at home and abroad.

The FY22 NDAA promotes resilience, innovation, and the right tools for U.S. success in strategic competition and provides vital quality of life improvements for the backbone of America’s fighting force: our service members and their families. The FY22 NDAA builds on previous attempts to close the pay gap by authorizing support for a 2.7 percent pay increase for our service men and women in uniform, making historic and sweeping changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice to combat sexual assault in the military, authorizing record funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, containing measures to ensure our military is diverse and inclusive, makes key investments to address the threat of climate change and bolsters energy resiliency across the Department of Defense, and taking full advantage of our diverse talent pool to meet the complex national security challenges of today and tomorrow.

SOME IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHTS ARE AS FOLLOWS: Increase in Basic Pay

• Supports increase in military basic pay by 2.7%. Incentive and Special Pays

• Requires the military to provide Reserve and National Guard service members incentive and special duty pay at the same rate as their active-duty counterparts. Diversity and Inclusion

• Requires independent review from the Services on the recruitment and retention of Hispanic service members. • Updates outdated diversity training requirements to ensure training includes programming to reduce discrimination and bias based on race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity, among other items. Private Funding of National Guard Activities

• Prohibits private funds from being used to fund any State’s National Guard deployment in another state, except for natural disaster emergencies. Special Trial Counsel

• Removes the Commander from decisions related to the prosecution of covered crimes including rape, sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, and kidnapping. • Criminalizes sexual harassment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

All claims of sexual harassment will be required to be investigated by an independent investigator outside the chain of command. • Establishes judge-alone sentencing and sentencing parameters to increase fairness across the system. Education

• Requires the Secretary of Defense to allow a covered individual to use Montgomery GI Bill benefits and Department of Defense tuition assistance benefits concurrently. COVID-19

• Provide that a servicemember who declines the COVID-19 vaccine may only receive an honorable discharge but requires that, during the period between

August 24, 2021, and 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, any discharge of a servicemember, on the sole basis that the member failed to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccine for COVID-19, shall be an honorable discharge, or a general discharge under honorable conditions. Space Force

• The Secretary of Defense will conduct a study to review the overall organization of the reserve component, including the appropriate allocation and use of Space assets in the reserve component, and the consideration of establishing a Space

National Guard. Military Families

• Creates a new category of bereavement leave for military personnel that would permit servicemembers to take up to two weeks of leave in connection with the death of a spouse or child. • Increases parental leave to 12 weeks for all servicemembers for the birth, adoption, or foster care placement of a child. • Establishes a Basic Needs Allowance to ensure that all servicemembers can meet the basic needs of their families. H

GOVERNOR ABBOTT VISITS TEXAS GUARD

TEXAS GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT visits with members of the Texas Military Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety for a pre-Thanksgiving meal in Del Rio, Texas, November 24, 2021. In March of 2021, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a joint mission between the departments and other state agencies to address concerns related to security along the Texas-Mexico border. (Photo by 94th Airlift Wing)