Panel Moves To Bar Women From Combat
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – The military would need congressional approval before putting women in direct combat roles under a bill in the House, its Republican sponsors say.
But Democrats said it was unclear whom the provision would affect and argued it could drastically impact the way the services operate, especially in wartime.
After more than an hour of debate over just what exactly the provision would do, it was included in a bill that sets Defense Department policy and spending plans for the upcoming budget year. The House Armed Services Committee approved the bill early yesterday on a 61-1 vote. The Senate is working on its own Defense Department bill.
President Bush requested $442 billion for defense for the budget year that begins October 1, excluding money to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House bill, like the Senate’s version, envisions creating a $50 billion fund for the conflicts for next year – but provides no money for it.
The measure also calls for increasing the military by 10,000 Army soldiers and 1,000 Marines, boosting pay grades for uniformed personnel by 3.1%, and permanently providing all Reserve and Guard members access to military health care services.
In a nearly 15-hour committee hearing, the most contentious issue was the role of women in combat.
The language would put into law a Pentagon policy from 1994 that prohibits female troops in all four service branches from serving in units below brigade level whose primary mission is direct ground combat.
“Many Americans feel that women in combat or combat support positions is not a bridge we want to cross at this point,” said Rep. John McHugh, a Republican of New York, who sponsored the amendment.
It also allows the Pentagon to further exclude women from units in other instances, while requiring defense officials to get congressional approval when opening up positions to women. The amendment replaced language in the bill that applied only to the Army and banned women from some combat support positions.
The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps currently operate under a 10-year-old policy that prohibits women from “direct combat on the ground” but allows the services discretion to open some jobs to women in combat as needed.
“We’re not taking away a single prerogative that the services now have,” Mr. McHugh said.
