House Republicans released legislation Sunday that would increase Pentagon spending by $150 billion, pushing the total defense budget for fiscal year 2025 to more than $1 trillion if passed.
The bill, developed by the House and Senate Armed Services committees, includes nearly $25 billion earmarked for President Trump’s long-discussed Golden Dome missile defense initiative, a shield intended to protect the entire continental United States against advanced missiles.
When combined with the already approved $886 billion defense budget, the added dollars would bring defense spending to more than $1 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.
Republicans are pushing the $150 billion funding boost as part of the party’s sprawling package full of Trump’s domestic policy priorities. Republicans are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, which allows the party to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate.
The House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to consider the legislation and hold a vote on advancing it — a gathering known as a markup — on Tuesday at 10 a.m. The panel’s language will then be combined with other portions from other panels to create the party’s budget reconciliation bill.
Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) called the defense portion of the reconciliation bill “a historic investment” to restore U.S. military capabilities and strengthen national defense.
“Our defense industrial base has weakened. America’s deterrence is failing and without a generational investment in our national defense, we will lose the ability to defeat our adversaries,” Rogers said in a statement accompanying the text of the bill. “With this bill, we have the opportunity to get back on track and restore our national security and global leadership.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), meanwhile, said the bill is a “generational upgrade” in military capability.
“This is about building the future of American defense, achieving peace through strength, and ultimately deterring war,” Wicker said.
The inclusion of the $150 billion defense funding boost puts to bed one of the disagreements between the House and Senate when it comes to the budget reconciliation bill. The budget resolution — which directs panels how to write their portions of the package — directed the House Armed Services Committee to appropriate $100 billion to increase defense spending, while the Senate Armed Services Committee was mandated to funnel $150 billion for defense.
In the end, the Senate won out, with the panel’s language including the $150 billion figure.
Democrats have already begun to push back on what House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) called a “partisan budget reconciliation gimmick.”
Smith said that while the bill includes $8.5 billion in spending that would support quality of life programs for service members, as well as needed weapons modernization, such investments should be considered through the normal authorization and appropriations process.
The bill “will be paid for by devastating cuts that can only come from critical programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and student loan and grant programs at the Department of Education,” Smith said in a statement Sunday. “And to add insult to injury, this will all be part of a legislative package that provides $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy but does nothing to lower costs for American families.”
Golden Dome is the bill’s flashiest spending line, pouring dollars into an initiative long touted by Trump on the campaign trail and established through a White House executive order earlier this year. Of the nearly $25 billion proposed for the program, roughly $15 billion would go toward satellites, space-based sensors and interceptor technology and launch infrastructure.
Also included in the bill is $33.7 billion for shipbuilding, $20.4 billion for munitions, $13.5 billion for “innovation,” $12.9 billion for nuclear deterrence, $11.5 billion for military readiness, $11.1 billion for Pacific deterrence, $7.2 billion for aircraft, $5 billion for border security, $4.5 billion for the B-21 bomber, $2 billion for military intelligence, and $380 million for the Pentagon’s annual audit.
Another $11.1 billion would go toward the unfunded priorities list for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — a key military arm as tensions with China grow — including $2 billion for the Defense Innovation Unit to obtain and modify commercial technology for military use, $2 billion for a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, and $1.5 billion for the Sentinel ICBM replacement program.
Other House panels are also scheduled to hold markups this week, including the Homeland Security Committee, the Education and Workforce Committee, the House Financial Services and Committee and the Oversight Committee.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he wants to advance the budget reconciliation package out of the House by the end of May.
“You will have committee markups scheduled in all those 11 committees successively over the next four weeks. And you're going to see this thing come together. We are pushing it very aggressively on a schedule, as you said, to get it done by Memorial Day,” he said on Fox News last week.
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