The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved its version of the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a measure that will push total military spending authorized this year beyond $1 trillion. The chamber voted 231–196, with 17 Democrats joining nearly all Republicans in support and four Republicans opposing the bill.
Depending on accounting, the NDAA’s topline is cited at about $883 billion or $893 billion, with more than $848 billion directed to the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit. Combined with the $150 billion in defense spending included in the July GOP budget reconciliation package signed by President Donald Trump, total defense approvals in 2025 will surpass $1 trillion. The legislation now moves to conference negotiations with the Senate, which is debating a version roughly $30 billion higher.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, criticized the bill’s scale and priorities. “Throwing a trillion dollars at the Pentagon—an agency replete with waste and fraud—at the same time the Republican Congress and the Trump regime are slashing spending on healthcare, education, housing, food assistance, and foreign aid is a disgraceful and unconscionable misuse of taxpayer money,” he said.
Weissman added that “On top of the age-old dangerous and wasteful spending, the bill pours billions into new boondoggles like Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ space interceptor vanity project and supercharges the dangerous development of killer robots for the battlefield. Making it still worse is the administration’s in-your-face, authoritarian misuse of Pentagon dollars—from the deployment of the National Guard on the streets of Washington, DC, to the illegal and murderous attack on a Venezuelan boat.”
The NDAA includes provisions for a 3.8% pay raise for service members in 2026 and an increase of about 26,000 active-duty troops. It also contains reforms to the military’s defense acquisition process, which House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., argued would “fundamentally reform the defense acquisition enterprise.” Rogers said the bill “will continue historic improvements in the quality of life for our service members and their families. And it will build the ready, capable, and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our other adversaries.”
Yet critics in Congress highlighted the lack of input from Democrats and the inclusion of socially divisive riders. House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith, D-Wash., told Politico that “we didn’t get any of the amendments and the debates that we wanted; not a single solitary one.” He added, “Meanwhile, all manner of different issues that are pure culture war partisan issues were allowed in. I fear that many of those are going to pass.”
Among those provisions were six Republican-sponsored anti-LGBTQI+ amendments condemned by the Congressional Equality Caucus. In a statement, caucus chair Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., said, “The National Defense Authorization Act has traditionally received strong bipartisan support, yet for the second Congress in a row House Republicans have tainted a bill aimed at improving the lives of servicemembers with poison-pill riders that threaten our troops’ rights, their families’ stability, and our efforts to retain top talent.”
Takano continued, “Republicans’ sacrifice of a strong bipartisan vote for a politicized NDAA to appease the Trump administration and a small slice of their base cannot undo the sacrifice of the transgender service members, cadets, or military dependents that will be hurt by this bill. Congress should be fighting for those who fight for us—but it’s clear the GOP has other priorities. I will keep fighting to prevent the harmful provisions in this bill from becoming law.”
Restrictions on abortion services were also included, while efforts by Democrats to limit Trump’s ability to deploy the National Guard domestically were blocked by Republican leadership. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, called the measure “a political exercise stuffed full of culture war asininity that greenlights the ongoing politicization of the Department of Defense at the expense of our national security.”
The debate did produce some moments of bipartisan compromise. A proposal from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to eliminate nearly all support for Ukraine security assistance was defeated in a 60–372 vote. Lawmakers also approved an amendment to rescind two open-ended war powers laws originally adopted before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Other proposals pushed by Trump, including renaming the Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” were not allowed to reach debate.
Despite modest provisions requiring reporting of waste, fraud, and price gouging, and financial penalties for failing audits, Weissman said these measures “do not begin to offset the damage done by the dangerous and wasteful overall package.”
With the Senate preparing its own higher-spending version, lawmakers face contentious negotiations over both the bill’s size and its controversial riders. Congressional staff aim to complete conference work later this fall before sending a compromise measure to the White House.
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