Defense topline in reconciliation bill likely to exceed $100 billion

The Defense Department is likely to receive more than $100 billion in additional funding through budget reconciliation. A top House lawmaker said the money should be spent to close capability gaps in the field rather than on major defense programs.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he wants to see more resources pushed directly to the combatant commands once both chambers agree on the final defense topline for a budget reconciliation bill.

“I think we’re going to end up somewhere north of $100 billion for defense budgets,” Wittman said during the McAleese and Associates conference on Tuesday.

“If you really want to get an indicator of where the risk is today, where the challenges are today — go to the combatant commands’ unfunded priorities list. You’ll get a little bit better indication about where things are. Our challenge is, how do we get dollars in a fast and effective way closer to the operational needs?”

President Donald Trump signed a full-year continuing resolution last Saturday to keep the government open through the rest of fiscal 2025. The Defense Department received a $6 billion boost to its budget, but otherwise, a CR freezes spending at the previous fiscal year’s levels. This is the first time the Defense Department has had to operate under a CR for a full year.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans want to leverage the budget reconciliation process this year to fund the Trump administration’s priorities around defense and border security, among other issues, without requiring any Democratic support.

Reconciliation is a special legislative process that allows budget-related bills to pass with a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

So far, House and Senate Republicans have not agreed on the best approach to the bill or the topline number. 

The House is pushing for a single bill approach that includes $300 billion in new spending for defense and border security, along with a $4 trillion debt limit increase and tax cut extensions. 

The Senate, however, proposed a two-step budget reconciliation process that starts with a defense and border security bill that includes $150 billion for defense, followed by a second bill addressing tax and spending cuts. 

Both chambers need to settle on the same approach for reconciliation to work.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the top lawmaker on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last week at least an additional $175 billion is needed to boost the defense budget. 

“It’s really going to revolve around how you get the two budget resolutions resolved. Those numbers are $100 to $150 billion so if I had a guess, I’d say negotiations will probably take place somewhere along those guardrails. Roger and I served together in the House. I understand his issues there to try to push the issue to get to the higher element, but it’s all part of the ongoing conversations,” Wittman told reporters. 

Aside from more money to the combatant commands, Wittman said the lawmakers need to enable organizations such as the Defense Innovation Unit to “get dollars and resources quicker” to the combatant commands.

“That’s really where the rubber hits the road. We want to find different ways to do that. We want to make sure we compress the acquisition cycle. We want to make sure that as technology and innovation comes to the surface, we want to encourage those small companies to be part of the defense industrial base enterprise,” said Wittman. 

“This year in the [National Defense Authorization Act], we’re going to be emphasizing acquisition reform.”

Organizations such as the DIU and the Office of Strategic Capital will also need more funding to scale their operations. 

“DIU does great work. They’re great at discovering what’s going on out there and operationalizing that. No matter how you look at it, you have to be able to scale that enterprise up,” said Wittman.

“I think there’s a lot of discussion to be had about how do you do it at scale? Do you allow these various entities to be able to do things independently? Or do you try to combine them all together and have one common enterprise? I’m not wed to a particular concept or the other but what I am wed to is that we have to make much larger investments to get this innovative technology into the hands of the war fighter.”

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