I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Sigma Top News for Friday, July 14th.

Here are today's headlines.

After a great deal of debate and negotiations, the House has passed the annual National

Defense Bill this morning.

The bill is known as the National Defense Authorization Act or the NDAA.

The major debate over the bill has centered on taxpayer money going towards abortions.

Most Republicans agreed to back the bill after it was amended to prohibit the Pentagon from

spending taxpayer money to pay for abortion-related travel and other expenses.

Four Republicans voted no, and four Democrats voted yes.

Three Republicans and two Democrats didn't vote.

The bill approves $886 billion for defense spending.

Heritage Foundation's Director of the Grover M. Herman Center for the Federal Budget,

Richard Stern, joins us now to discuss this a little further.

Richard, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me on the talk panel.

So if you would share a little bit about the process of this very large defense spending

bill actually getting approved in the House because we were hearing for so long, there's

debate, there's disagreement, it's not moving forward, and then all of a sudden this morning

it is approved.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, defense is actually one of the weird places where the process is mostly

followed, and that's going to come as no surprise to our listeners here.

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