Congress Gives the Military $8 Billion More Than It Asked for
The version of the NDAA passed by the House is larger than the administration’s budget request.
The House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026, giving the military a record $900.6 billion—more than the $892.6 billion base defense budget that the Trump administration's Department of War had asked for. The Senate is expected to pass the bill next week, sending it to President Donald Trump's desk.
The American public, of course, isn't clamoring for more military spending. A poll conducted by the nonprofit Institute for Global Affairs in October 2025 found that 40 percent of Americans wanted to decrease the military budget, 50 percent wanted to keep it the same, and only 10 percent wanted to increase it. And the military itself isn't even calling for this much more money, either. Congress' budget pushes funding for programs that the brass wants to get rid of.
In the past, Congress forced the Navy to keep building ships that it considered badly designed and useless. This time around, Congress is preventing the Air Force from retiring the decades-old F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet and A-10 Warthog ground attack plane or shutting down its program to acquire a new flying radar and command center, known as the E-7 Wedgetail.
The Air Force cancelled the E-7 program earlier this year for several reasons. It was over budget and behind schedule, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told Congress that the E-7 was "not survivable in the modern battlefield." Instead, the Trump administration planned to expand space-based sensors, which could not be so easily shot down, as part of its Golden Dome program.
But lawmakers in Oklahoma, where the Air Force keeps its airborne early warning and control fleet, pushed to save the E-7. So did a group of retired Air Force generals, who argued that the space-based surveillance capability would take too long to develop for use in "near-term conflicts," such as a war with China.
Congress is also forcing the Trump administration to either keep or expand the current U.S. military presence in Europe. (Last week, the administration published a National Security Strategy doubting "whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.") The House bill bans the military from using its funds to hand back any U.S. bases to European countries, to move any equipment worth $500,000 or more out of Europe, or to reduce U.S. troop levels in the region below 76,000 people.
Similarly, the bill bans the U.S. military from yanking back equipment given to Ukraine and requires the Trump administration to inform Congress about any decision to stop intelligence sharing with the Ukrainian military. And it includes $400 million for the Ukrainian military to buy American weapons. Last month, Trump reportedly threatened to cut off all aid and intelligence sharing if Ukraine failed to accept his peace plan, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said would leave Ukraine "without freedom."
In addition to the Ukrainian aid, the bill includes $1 billion for Taiwan, $1.5 billion for the Philippines, $175 million for Baltic countries, $357 million for a grab bag of Middle Eastern militias, and $650 million for Israel—as well as a commitment to help Israel find weapons that other countries refuse to sell due to human rights concerns or international sanctions.
While the bill mostly locks in and increases U.S. military commitments abroad, there are a few ways in which it helps restrain the White House's war powers.
For more than 20 years, Congress has kept the 2002 authorization for the use of military force against Iraq on the books, and administrations have used it as a justification for other wars in the Middle East. The new military budget finally repeals that authorization. It doesn't affect the even more vague 2001 authorization for force against terrorism, which presidents used to justify several current and former wars, including parts of the Iraq War itself.
The bill also forces the Department of War to release "unedited video" of its attacks on alleged smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, cutting Hegseth's travel budget until he complies. Hegseth had ordered the military to launch a second strike against a disabled, sinking boat to finish off the survivors, because a few of the alleged smugglers "could still be in the fight," in his words.
Democrats, however, accuse Hegseth of committing a war crime by killing defenseless sailors—the U.S. military's own Law of War Manual says that "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal"—and have asked him for the full footage of the attack. Hegseth told an audience last week that he is looking into what footage would be "responsible" to release.
"It seems pretty clear they don't want to release this video because they don't want people to see it because it's very, very difficult to justify," Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) told ABC News.
Actually passing this military budget turned out to be a complicated affair. Several Republicans threatened to hold up the bill because it didn't include various measures they wanted, including a bill to deter charities from working under the Taliban government of Afghanistan and a bill to ban trans surgeries for minors. In the end, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.) talked down the dissenters.
But some members of Congress from both parties voted against the final budget on principle.
"There is no check on the ballooning military budget. The Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive annual audits. No other agencies would be able to fail audits and simultaneously receive more funding year after year," Rep. Jahana Hayes (D–Conn.) said in a press release. "This, in addition to President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth continuing to use our military without regard for the rule of law. Congress must take back our Article I powers and end these unlawful actions."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), who is resigning effective January 2026, wrote on social media that "I would love to fund our military but refuse to support foreign aid and foreign militaries and foreign wars."
