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House speaker Mike Johnson is set to hold a vote today on a Republican stopgap budget to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year.
The federal government is already operating under a continuing resolution that expires Friday at midnight.
Absent action by Congress and the president by the deadline, the government would shut down.
But even the proposed funding patch is not great news for the Defense Department. CRs continue spending at the previous year’s appropriations with no new-start programs, which delays some equipment modernization.
The language in the Republican-led bill does provide the Pentagon with some relief. It would add $6 billion in new spending and allow DoD to begin new programs, provided they were funded in either last year’s House or Senate fiscal 2025 appropriations bills that were never enacted.
The proposed topline would bring total defense spending for this fiscal year to roughly $847 billion, still short of the $850 billion-plus that defense planners had hoped for in fiscal 2025.
A NGAUS dive into the details reveals approximately $850 million in the congressionally directed National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account along with increases for Guard military construction and the Guard counterdrug program over the original request by then-President Joe Biden.
However, there are no Guard equipment add-ons, which have helped modernization in recent defense bills.
The proposal also cuts $13 billion in nondefense funding, according to GOP leaders.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump took to social media to urge support for the measure, calling it “a very good funding bill” that will sustain critical government programs until next fall.
Democrats had a different opinion. They prefer a shorter-term CR.
“This continuing resolution is a blank check for Elon Musk and creates more flexibility for him to steal from the middle class, seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses, and farmers to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
— By John Goheen
