White House Threatens to Veto VA, Military Construction Spending Bill over GOP Policies

The White House is threatening to veto the annual Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction funding bill over GOP-backed riders that would undo VA policies on LGBTQ+ veterans and abortion.

The bill as written by House Republicans "includes numerous, partisan policy provisions with devastating consequences including harming access to reproductive health care, threatening the health and safety of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Americans, endangering marriage equality, hindering critical climate change initiatives, and preventing the administration from promoting diversity, equity and inclusion," the White House budget office said in a statement Monday.

"If the president were presented with H.R. 8580, he would veto it," the statement added, referring to the bill by its number.

The statement signals that efforts to come to an agreement on funding the government in the next fiscal year could be as much of a slog as they were this year, when dispute over funding levels and partisan politics brought the government to the brink of shutting down several times and kept an agreement out of reach for half the fiscal year.