By MOAA Staff

MOAA believes the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes significant quality of life improvements for servicemembers and their families, expands and updates key benefit programs, and requires key reports designed to ensure continued, meaningful congressional oversight.

For these reasons, MOAA supports swift passage of the legislation, which has become law every year since 1961. The bill passed the House 281-140 on Dec. 11 and will move to the Senate in the closing days of the 118th Congress.

[TAKE ACTION: Ask Your Lawmaker to Back Critical NDAA Provisions]

“MOAA is extremely grateful to the lawmakers and their staffs who crafted this bipartisan legislation,” said Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly, USAF (Ret), MOAA’s president and CEO. “We are especially appreciative of the work of the House Armed Services Committee’s Quality of Life Panel, whose report served as the foundation for the House bill and whose recommendations have, in many cases, become meaningful parts of the final legislation now under consideration. MOAA believes this legislation will make a real difference in the quality of life and quality of service of our uniformed servicemembers and families. This legislation recognizes strong national defense and readiness start with having strong people and families and appreciates that the two are undeniably linked.”

Kelly highlighted a number of MOAA-endorsed provisions in the bill, to include:

• Military Pay Raise and Junior Enlisted Pay Increase: Increased junior enlisted pay by 14.5%, with an increase of 4.5% for all others.
  
  
• Unaccompanied Housing: Improvements include authorizing the services to provide free broadband internet access to servicemembers residing in unaccompanied housing, and the expansion of the DoD Housing Feedback System to include unaccompanied housing.
  
  
• Basic Needs Allowance: An increase in the threshold from 150% to 200% of the federal poverty guidelines would increase the number of military families eligible for this vital assistance program.
  
  
• Military Family Support: Improvements include more child care coverage for military spouses seeking employment, a 100% discount for DoD child care providers on the care of one child and reduced costs for additional children (standardizing the benefit across the departments), and upgrades to the portability of professional licenses of servicemembers and military spouses.
  
  
• TRICARE and the Military Health System: Improvements include a referral waiver for servicemembers seeking physical therapy, nutrition, audiology, optometry, and podiatry services in military treatment facilities; the elimination of TRICARE contraception copays to align with federal requirements for commercial health plans; and licensure flexibility allowing TRICARE mental health providers to provide tele-mental health care to servicemembers and their families without regard to the location of the provider or the patient.
  
  
• Travel Expense Reimbursement: Effective in January 2027, DoD would reimburse reserve component travel and some related expenses for servicemembers who travel over 50 miles to inactive duty training (IDT) and muster duty.
  
  

“These efforts to support the military community and provide for the all-volunteer force show the great strides possible when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle work with stakeholders like MOAA and fellow military service organizations,” Kelly said. “We look forward to Congress moving on this legislation without delay, and for lawmakers to complete their appropriations duties – including a full DoD budget – alongside these measures.”

Keep up with the progress of the NDAA and other MOAA advocacy priorities on MOAA's Advocacy News page and by registering at our Legislative Action Center.