H.R. 4909,  The Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act

Following-up on last week’s Legislative Update, H.R. 4904, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 will be debated on the House floor during the week of May 16. On Monday, May 16, the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives will convene to consider amendments to be debated. In all, 359 amendments were submitted by the May 11 deadline.

H.R. 4909 legislative language and all 359 amendments can be found on the House Rules Committee website, here.

For EANGUS members following the process, the EANGUS National Office created a filtered tracker of relevant amendments. Once the House Rules Committee meets to finalize the amendment list for floor debate, the EANGUS National Office will distribute a legislative call to action in support of Guard-friendly amendments.

*Shout Out to Representative Poliquin (R-ME) for submitting an amendment (Amendment #300) to study travel distances for members of the National Guard who travel great distances to report for duty. This spring, the EANGUS National Office worked closely with Representative Poliquin’s staff to transform our 2016 EANGUS Legislative Workshop point paper into legislative language. Ideally, the amendment will be adopted and DOD will conduct a study that shows the unfair treatment our most rural Guardsmen and women face when traveling to drill weekend. By next year, the EANGUS National Office will work to transform the results of that study into legislative language to compensate those negatively affected.