US Congress considers ‘must-pass’ defense policy bill that would top Trump’s spending request
Written by: Patricia Zengerle and Julia Harte
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers unveiled the annual defense policy bill on Sunday that would authorize a record $901 billion in national security spending next year, billions of dollars more than President Donald Trump’s request, and provide $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
The sweeping 3,000-page bill includes a 4% raise for drafted soldiers but does not include a bipartisan effort to encourage housing construction that some lawmakers had hoped to include in the final bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in a statement that the law would advance Trump’s agenda by “ending the ideology awakened in the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base and restoring the warrior ethos.”
The measure is a compromise between versions of the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate and House of Representatives earlier this year, both controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans.
Trump in May requested from Congress a national defense budget of $892.6 billion for fiscal year 2026, a flat figure compared to 2025 spending. This includes funding for the Department of Defense as well as other security and defense-related agencies and programs.
The House bill set spending at that level, but the Senate had authorized $925 billion.
The NDAA authorizes but does not fund Pentagon programs. Congress must separately provide funding in a spending bill for the fiscal year ending September 2026.
In addition to typical NDAA provisions on purchasing military equipment and improving competitiveness with rivals like China and Russia, this year’s bill focuses on cutting programs that Trump has decried, such as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and deploying troops along the southwestern U.S. border to interdict undocumented immigrants and drugs.
It also repeals two decisions authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in 1991 and 2002.
Considered the “must pass” bill, the massive NDAA is one of the few major pieces of legislation that Congress passes each year, and lawmakers have been proud to pass it every year for more than six decades.
The bill usually emerges after Republican and Democratic lawmakers negotiate behind closed doors for weeks. But this year’s process was more biased than ever.
Some Democrats had threatened to delay the measure over Trump’s use of the military in US cities until Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, agreed to hold a hearing on the issue this week.
Earlier this year, Republicans defeated efforts by Democrats to block the deployment of the military to American cities and block the conversion of a luxury jet supplied by Qatar to serve as Air Force One.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Julia Harte; Editing by Sergio Non and Diane Craft)
