The House on Thursday voted 218-214 to pass the massive reconciliation bill with $150 billion for defense that the Pentagon has built into its fiscal year 2026 spending plans.
After consideration of the tax and spending bill went through the night in the lower chamber, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” now heads to President Trump’s desk for final signature.
“The One Big, Beautiful Bill makes a historic and long overdue investment of $150 billion to achieve President Trump’s Peace Through Strength agenda and restore American deterrence. We can’t afford to wait any longer to begin rebuilding our military capacity, launching the future of American defense, and supercharging American manufacturing,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “From the beginning, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have recognized the urgent need to invest in our national security and worked closely with the White House to develop a unified approach.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) faced a tenuous situation late on Wednesday with several holdouts from hardline conservatives who sought deeper spending cuts in the bill, with Republican leadership having pressed ahead with considering the version of the legislation passed by the Senate earlier in the week (Defense Daily, July 1).
Ultimately, just two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), joined all Democrats in voting against the measure, with the minority having opposed the bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs.
The reconciliation process allowed the Senate to pass the billions of dollars in budget-related Trump administration priorities without requiring the 60-vote threshold needed to break the filibuster.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, last week unveiled the updated version of the defense portion of the legislation, which included adding funds for industrial base and critical minerals efforts, a cut to border operations support and removing classified programs (Defense Daily, June 25).
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees were responsible for crafting the defense portions of the reconciliation bill, which covers $150 billion in defense spending that would be allocated over the next four years and builds in flexibility to be spent over the next decade, to include $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense system, tens of billions to boost shipbuilding and production of munitions and drones and increases for a wide swath of defense priorities.
Lawmakers, including Wicker and top Senate defense appropriator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have pushed back on the Trump administration’s decision to include $113 billion of the total $150 billion in anticipated reconciliation funds to achieve its proposed $1 trillion defense request for fiscal year 2026 (Defense Daily, June 4).
“In the realm of national defense, there is still more to be done. Reconciliation was an opportunity to make an urgent, additive investment on top of a steadily increasing base budget, not an invitation to offload major annual priorities to a one-time injection of funds. Largely missing this opportunity makes the Congress’ work to secure robust topline defense funding even more important, and I will continue to urge my colleagues and the Administration to meet growing and coordinated threats to America’s security with the resources they demand,” McConnell said on Tuesday.