'The administration's commitment to reconciliation is what led the DoD to be so confident in putting so many capabilities in the bill," a defense official said.
The Defense Department’s $848.3 billion budget request for fiscal 2026 is slightly lower compared to its $849.8 billion request in fiscal 2025.
But senior military and defense officials told reporters Thursday they built the fiscal 2026 budget around a “one budget, two bills” approach — meaning the reconciliation bill currently being debated in Congress should be considered part of the overall defense budget.
The reconciliation bill — a major piece of legislation Republicans are advancing through the House and Senate — includes $113.3 billion in mandatory defense funding. If passed, it would bring the Defense Department’s total budget to $961.6 billion. The one-time bill would fund President Donald Trump’s priorities, including shipbuilding, missile defense, munitions and quality of life improvements.
If the legislation doesn’t pass, the Defense Department’s fiscal 2026 budget would remain essentially flat, forcing the Pentagon to reassess its planned investments and potentially cut or delay key modernization programs.
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The defense officials did not share what the department’s plan would be if Congress ultimately fails to approve the measure but said that “the President and the administration’s commitment to reconciliation is what led the department to be so confident in putting so many critical capabilities in the reconciliation bill.”
“If reconciliation does not pass, at this moment, we’re very excited to see the Senate’s progress on reconciliation. Very happy that the House has been collaborating on the defense portion, and we have been working with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on those defense portions as well. This is our request for what we would like to see in reconciliation and what we would like to see in the discretionary base, and it will go through the normal congressional budgeting process from here. We will work with Congress on the details on why the department is requesting certain things in our $961 billion request,” a senior defense official said.
When asked about future defense budgets once the department can no longer rely on reconciliation, defense officials said that unless the President’s tone change, the department we’ll stick with $1 trillion for national defense spending in 2027.
Lawmakers have criticized the “one budget, two bills” framework, arguing that relying on a one-time measure sends inconsistent demand signals to private industry.
The defense officials pushed back, saying that the measure would actually send a stronger demand signal to the companies.
“It’s the first time the Department of Defense has received mandatory money like this. It’s 10-year money with a lot more flexibility than the average discretionary dollar provides. It’s often colorless, and it gives us that ten-year window that industry often asks us than the one-year budget cycle that we always are on,” the senior defense official said.
“Also, given the timeline that reconciliation is on, should it pass, it will be delivered faster to the department than the FY 26 discretionary base. So those programs will actually be on a much faster and more stable timeline with a better demand signal over the long term,” the defense official added.
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Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly voiced concerns that the Defense Department lacks a clear and transparent plan for the additional defense funding requested by the Trump administration through the reconciliation process, and no mechanism to account for how the funds would be spent.
“The legislation as written is effectively a blank check — a slush fund with no real checks or balances or mechanisms for oversight. It is, by definition, an opportunity for waste, fraud and abuse,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) said in April.
In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military services to identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut and redirect that money to fund this administration’s priorities.
The defense officials said the money was mostly found through civilian workforce reductions.
“The realignment was really a realignment,” a senior military official said. “That 8% went specifically into programs that were going to best benefit the warfighters. Something like the F-47 that you look at space-based sensing, Golden Dome, the munitions investments that we want to do, and then our things like unaccompanied housing as well, and taking care of our force.”
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