Hawai‘i lawmakers voted Wednesday against a military funding bill allocating more than $900 million to the state.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed on Wednesday the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act, a 1,200-page measure authorizing funds for military projects throughout the U.S. Armed Forces.
Included among those funds are about $946 million for various Army and Navy projects in Hawai‘i. These include an unspecified $235 million construction project at the Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, the 8,172-acre Navy facility in West Kaua‘i.
The bill also includes $83 million in funds for a construction project at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Most of the Hawai‘i-specific allocations are funding extensions for projects from 2022 or 2023 budgets. For example, the bill authorizes an extension of a 2023 project to construct an aircraft maintenance hangar at the Kāne‘ohe Bay Marine Corps base, to the tune of nearly $117 million.
Other projects included in the bill are a $51 million ammunition storage facility at the West Loch Naval Annex, $230 million toward water system and other upgrades for Fort Shafter, Schofield Barracks and Tripler Army Medical Center, $64 million for electrical system modernizations at the Kāne‘ohe Bay Marine Corps base, and $142 million for missile magazine construction and another $25 million for electrical distribution upgrades, both at Joint Base PHH.
But Hawai‘i reps Jill Tokuda and Ed Case joined most House Democrats in voting against the bill. Tokuda addressed Congress Wednesday, accusing House Republicans of abandoning protections supporting service members.
“I submitted 10 amendments focused on improving national security and the quality of life of our service members, such as strengthening military housing, standing up to China, supporting Native Hawaiian veterans, and holding sexual predators accountable,” Tokuda said. “Not one made it in.”
One of those amendments would have disinterred the body of Robert Browne — an Army veteran and St. Francis Hospital psychiatrist accused of sexually assaulting dozens of Kamehameha Schools students before his 1991 suicide — from Punchbowl Cemetery.
“Republicans said no,” Tokuda said. “They are once again protecting a pedophile, allowing him to lie in a place of honor.”
Other of Tokuda’s amendments would have removed unfair commissary fees and medical copays for veterans, improve investments and maintenance for barracks, limiting the export of “advanced AI chips” to Beijing, increasing the spending cap for a defense partnership with Taiwan, and others.
Instead, Tokuda said, the bill has been twisted into a vehicle for “partisan poison pills,” without any allowance for bipartisan dialogue. She called out the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C. and the deportation of Army veteran and Honolulu resident Sae Joon Park in June.
The House voted 18 times on various amendments to the bill Wednesday before a final vote on passage of the measure.
Representatives voted 231-196 in support of the bill, with votes largely split down party lines: only four Republicans broke ranks to oppose the bill, and 17 Democrats voting in support of it. Case and Tokuda were among the 192 Democrats in opposition.
The bill next goes before the Senate for further deliberation.
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