The Senate passed a defense bill Wednesday that authorizes significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, aims to counter China’s growing power and boosts overall military spending to $895 billion.

The annual defense authorization bill usually gains strong bipartisan support and has not failed to pass Congress in nearly six decades, but the Pentagon policy measure in recent years has become a battleground for cultural issues. Republicans this year sought to tack on to the legislation priorities for social conservatives, contributing to a months-long negotiation over the bill and a falloff in support from Democrats.

Still, the bill passed comfortably 85-14, sending it to President Joe Biden. Eleven senators who caucus with Democrats, as well as three Republicans, voted against the legislation.

The bill “isn’t perfect, but it still includes some very good things that Democrats fought for,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a floor speech. “It has strong provisions to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party here on a national security basis.”

The legislation easily passed by a vote of 281-140 in the House last week.

Senate Republican leaders argued that its 1% increase for defense spending was not enough, especially at a time of global unrest and challenges to American dominance. Senate Republicans had argued for a generational boost to defense spending this year, but are planning another push for more defense funding once they control the White House and Congress next year.

“We are currently experiencing the most dangerous national security moments since World War II,” said Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who will chair the Senate Armed Services Committee next year. He has pushed for larger boosts to defense funding that would break spending caps that were agreed to in the bipartisan deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling last year.

The annual defense authorization bill directs key Pentagon policy, but it would still need to be backed up with an appropriations package.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a floor speech this week that without the topline increase “major bill provisions like a pay raise for enlisted servicemembers will come at the expense of investments in the critical weapons systems and munitions that deter conflict and keep them safe.”

The legislation provides for a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5% increase for others. Lawmakers said those were key to improving the quality of life of service members at a time when many military families rely on food banks and other government assistance programs to make ends meet.

“It includes major quality of life improvements, enhancing things like childcare, housing, medical services, employment support for military spouses and much more,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The legislation also directs resources towards a more confrontational approach to China, including establishing a fund that could be used to send military resources to Taiwan in much the same way that the U.S. has backed Ukraine. It also invests in new military technologies, including artificial intelligence, and bolsters the U.S. production of ammunition.

The U.S. has also moved in recent years to ban the military from purchasing Chinese products, and the defense bill extended that with prohibitions on Chinese goods from garlic in military commissaries to drone technology.

The Chinese foreign ministry responded to that move last week by calling the bans laughable.

“I don’t think it could ever occur to garlic that it would pose a ‘major threat’ to the U.S.,” said Mao Ning, a ministry spokeswoman. “From drones to cranes, from refrigerators to garlic, more and more Chinese-made products have been accused by the US of ‘posing national security risks’. But has the US shown any reliable evidence or rationale to back up those accusations?”

But in Congress, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been mostly united in their stance that China is a rising threat. Instead, it was culture war issues that divided lawmakers on the bill, which took months to negotiate.

The bill also still prohibits funding for teaching critical race theory in the military.

Mike Zamore, the director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, urged Biden to veto the bill, saying it was “forcing thousands of active-duty service members to choose between their careers in the military and the future of their transgender children.”

(AP)