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The House Rules Committee advanced a nearly $900 billion compromise defense bill that includes big pay raises for junior troops and a ban on transgender care ban for the children of service members. 

The cost of the negotiated FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA marks a substantial increase over an earlier Senate version, which was represented about a 1% more than FY2024 at $833 billion.

The committee voted to move bill forward on Monday. It could see a House floor vote as early as Tuesday.

The bill contains a ban on Chinese drones from operating on U.S. communications networks, which drew swift condemnation from the technology company DJI.

“Chinese drones are singled out for scrutiny, and the current text does not designate a specific agency to undertake the required study. We call for the agency tasked with this work to be technical in nature to ensure the assessment is evidence-based,” the company said.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and a key negotiator with regard to the bill, said in a statement Sunday that he might not support the bill in its current form due to the transgender language.

“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong,” he said. “I urge the speaker to abandon this current effort and let the House bring forward a bill — reflective of the traditional bipartisan process — that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesn’t attack the transgender community.”

Johnson said in a statement about that the compromised version of the legislation would “end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors.” 

The bill’s hefty price-tag derives, in part, from 4.5% pay raises for service members. The legislation also includes the largest pay increase in U.S. history, a total of 14.5%, for junior U.S. troops. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, has said Congress should “slash waste” and work to reduce defense spending.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote on social media that he agrees with Musk on the need to reduce the amount of money the U.S. spends on defense each year, given that the Pentagon continues to fail audits. 

“Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions,” Sanders wrote in a X post.

“Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change,” Sanders also wrote on X.