There’s lots happening today in Washington. Congress is grappling with the looming Obamacare cliff, which could mean the loss of health-care coverage for millions of Americans or huge premium hikes. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates again. The Pentagon continues to deal with the fallout from President Donald Trump’s administration’s deadly attacks on alleged drug smugglers tied to Venezuela.
Yet in a move that isn’t getting the attention it should, the White House has left the door open to once again boosting military spending next year by a party-line vote in Congress, a dramatic shift from longstanding practice.
Over the weekend, OMB Director Russ Vought proclaimed that Trump and GOP congressional leaders could once again increase defense spending using the reconciliation process. This threatens one of the few remaining areas of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill — how much to spend annually on the American military.
The continued use of reconciliation as a means to fund the Pentagon would sidestep the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passage and further weaken the power of appropriators already under heavy pressure from the White House. Defense authorizers are responsible for shepherding reconciliation measures through Congress.
And of course, this is an effort to cut away at the power of Hill Democrats. If the House flips in 2026, Trump will have to bargain with Democrats on every legislative topic. If the administration uses reconciliation in 2026 to boost defense spending, it may be their last opportunity to do so.
Top defense lawmakers want to see this shut down.
“I would prefer to use the regular appropriations process,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told us.
“A reconciliation bill is not how we ensure defense spending going forward,” added Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior defense appropriator. “That’s what we do in appropriations.”
Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, warned against going down a party-line path to fund national defense, arguing it will set a dangerous precedent for future presidents to follow:
“What goes around comes around and, frankly, it would be destructive of one of the few remaining bipartisan issues.”
The pushback came after Vought pledged at the Reagan National Defense Forum over the weekend that defense spending would continue to increase, but possibly through another Republican-controlled reconciliation bill. Meaning this could be done without Democratic votes.
GOP leaders and Trump previously funneled $150 billion to the Pentagon under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill included investments in a variety of priorities ranging from shipbuilding and munitions production to Trump’s push to build a “Golden Dome” anti-missile shield covering the United States.
Vought said the use of reconciliation is a “paradigm shift” for military funding and “a lesson for how we can ensure that defense increases are not hamstrung by the rest of the national agenda, by some that are on the other side.”
The Trump administration is using a bifurcated approach to fund the military in FY2026: a sprawling reconciliation package and the base defense budget. Taken together, officials say Pentagon spending will top $1 trillion for the first time.
Yet leading defense hawks have argued that the White House’s nearly $893 billion base budget request for the Department of Defense, which would keep national security spending flat relative to FY2025, is a funding cut.
Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense subcommittee, slammed what he called “the profoundly dysfunctional approach” Vought and White House officials have taken for funding the Pentagon.
Leveraging reconciliation, Coons told reporters over the weekend, has created “tens of billions of dollars of misalignments” between OBBB and the base defense budget. Meanwhile the Defense Department has yet to submit its full reconciliation spending plan to Congress.
“I hope [Vought] will abandon efforts to destroy the mechanisms by which the Senate achieves a bipartisan annual defense appropriations bill,” Coons said.
Pro Vought. Vought’s tough talk is getting back up from some conservatives in Congress.
“We’ve got to do whatever is the effective methodology,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said. “This year, [reconciliation] was effective, and it may be effective again next year.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who serves on SASC, was bullish on the approach too. “If that’s the way we have to do it, that’s the way we have to do it,” he said.
NDAA update. The House Rules Committee approved a rule for considering the annual defense bill late Tuesday, though it’s unclear if GOP leaders can successfully take that path or whether they’ll have to consider the legislation under suspension of the rules, which would require two-thirds of the chamber’s support.
There’s plenty of grumbling about the final NDAA product — there always is — but little indication of a mass rebellion that could tank the whole must-pass package.
Rogers projected confidence the House could pass the rule for the NDAA — “We’ll be fine. I’m an optimistic guy” — but said it would move under suspension, if necessary. The White House backed the bill in a Statement of Administration Policy on Tuesday.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said it “remains to be seen” if Democrats would provide enough votes to pass the NDAA should Republicans try to pass it under suspension.
This is news. Separately, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote to the Navy secretary to express “serious concerns” about the investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.).
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to complete its review of Kelly by today. The retired Navy captain faces the threat of being recalled and court-martialled depending on the outcome.
