Senate defense hawks are pushing back on the White House plan for a narrowly tailored reconciliation bill, warning that Republicans may have only one opportunity to finance President Donald Trump’s military buildup and demanding far more than the House’s $60 billion defense proposal.
The fight is complicating Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s effort to cobble together 50 Republican votes before the Senate adjourns next week until mid-September. Republicans broadly agree the Pentagon needs significantly more money, but they are divided over whether the next reconciliation bill should cover only immediate needs or finance a sweeping military buildup.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) said the package should include roughly $300 billion for defense — roughly five times the House instruction — while other hawks urged Republican leaders to increase the number substantially.
“We need something close to $300 billion for this generational investment, to defend ourselves in the world against the axis of aggression,” Wicker said.
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The push runs counter to fiscally conservative Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s pitch for a narrow bill, with the remainder of Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget request deferred to a later reconciliation package.
“It should be tight,” Vought told reporters after meeting with Senate Republicans this week. “It should be for the defense needs that we need now, for the [agriculture] needs that we need now, and to get this as straight a shot to the president’s desk as possible.”House Speaker Mike Johnson, along these lines, sent the Senate the House’s $95 billion reconciliation bill by striking a delicate balance between defense hawks in his conference and fiscal conservatives wary of adding billions to the deficit. Offsetting the new spending could require politically painful spending cuts just ahead of November’s elections.
Thune has signaled that the House’s defense number is likely to be too low for his members. He told reporters he would “prefer doubling” it as Republican leaders search for enough votes to advance the measure.
But Budget Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), a fiscal hawk whose committee would spearhead the reconciliation bill, poured cold water on the defense increase. He said Thune had not mentioned it to him.
“White House is trying to skinny it down for passage, so we’ll see,” Johnson said. “I know there’s a desire on the part of many to increase those numbers. Again, we’ll have to figure out what the conference wants to do here.”
The unresolved questions come amid growing alarm over the Iran war’s toll on U.S. munitions stockpiles, which are being further depleted because of Trump’s fresh escalation in the conflict.
The Pentagon on Wednesday signed a $56 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for Patriot interceptors, but the money for that and other budget priorities, such as Golden Dome missile defenses, requires congressional approval.
“You look at munitions — you look at Golden Dome — that are in reconciliation; time is running out,” said Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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