The administration's $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget request lands at a moment of unusual strategic uncertainty — an active conflict with Iran, open questions about US commitments to NATO and European allies, and a Congress that is deeply divided on how much of this request will actually become law.
On June 10, 2026, CQ Roll Call's defense and national security team convened to walk through what's ahead. Andrew Clevenger, CQ Roll Call's Defense and National Security Editor, hosted the conversation alongside reporters John M. Donnelly and Rebecca Kheel. Together they covered where the FY2027 NDAA and appropriations bills stand, why the $350 billion defense reconciliation package faces serious headwinds in the Senate, how the Iran war is reshaping supplemental requests and war powers debates, and what the compressed legislative calendar means for organizations tracking defense policy, federal appropriations, or any issue tied to military spending priorities.
Video Highlights
- [00:47] — $1.5 trillion request explained — base budget plus reconciliation
- [01:56] — House Defense Appropriations markup underway; NDAA status in both chambers
- [04:22] — Defense reconciliation is a "big TBD" — nearly $350 billion at risk
- [06:05] — Democratic opposition to $1.1T topline; 12 Dems vote against in committee
- [07:04] — Culture war flashpoints — Confederate base names and Department of War renaming
- [09:49] — Iran war supplemental is largely separate; Democratic opposition expected
- [11:44] — House NDAA's Iran provisions — cost accounting amendment and war powers resolution
- [16:06] — NDAA timeline — House before July 4th; election year compresses appropriations calendar
- [19:01] — CRs are the norm; shutdown possible; FY2027 spending could extend into 2027
- [27:26] — Strong bipartisan Ukraine support despite absence from current bills
Full Transcript
Andrew Clevenger: All right, welcome everyone who's tuning in to this webinar about defense issues that are currently in front of Congress. I'm Andrew Clevenger, I'm the CQ Roll Call Defense and National Security Editor, and I'm joined by award-winning reporters John Donnelly and Rebecca Keel. We are part of the policy note suite, that is available through FiscalNote, and if you want to learn more about that, please check it out at fiscalNote.com. And, with that, I'd like to get right to it. John, can you bring us up to speed on where things stand in terms of defense funding for fiscal 2027? It seems like there are a lot of pieces in the mix.
John Donnelly: There absolutely are, more than usual. So, backing up, the President, a few months ago, asked for a fiscal 2027 defense budget that was a record-breaking proposal of $1.5 trillion. And he broke it into two pieces. He said about $1.1 billion and change would be in the so-called base budget, and about $350 billion would come via a reconciliation measure, which is, as I'm sure a lot of our viewers know, a way of enacting appropriations that does not… that can get around the filibuster in the Senate, to make a long story short. But it's not an easy process, it's a time-consuming process, a very partisan process, and it's also a one-time infusion, or since we had one last year, two-time infusion, about $150 billion last year. But anyway, a temporary, not an abiding part of the ongoing defense, you know, program. So, a two-part, $1.5 trillion request.
John Donnelly: Today, the House, or tomorrow morning, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will mark up its portion of that request. It will be just the base budget portion of it. I'll get to the reconciliation more about that in a minute. But setting that aside, the base budget part, 96% or so of which goes through the Defense Subcommittee, will be marked up tomorrow. That bill was released today for the first time, and it basically endorses the size, dollar-wise, of the President's request of about $1.1 trillion, or just short of that. disagreement with the president on a detail here and there. For example, there are more Apache helicopters than he requested. They also notably agreed to his request for a single destroyer, but there are a lot of people in Congress who are going to want to buy two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. So, there are disagreements on things like that.
John Donnelly: But the House Appropriations Committee has got their spending bill going. We don't know when the Senate's going to do theirs. On the authorizing side, the Armed Services Committee, last week, the House Armed Services Committee approved its authorization measure, the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act. for fiscal 2027, which also essentially endorsed, you know, the dollar amount of the president's budget. And for, actually, most of the details with a few, A few, departures from his, blueprint.
John Donnelly: So that is… and we expect the House, to take up that bill, perhaps before the July 4th recess. The Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, is meeting as we speak, to write its, NDAA. The subcommittees finished their work yesterday. The full committee is doing its work today. There's a chance they may even finish this evening, breaking news. But I don't know. I'm not willing to bet the mortgage on that, but it's a pretty safe bet that they'll finish this week. And they, too, are expected to endorse the dollar amount, and we'll see about the contents soon. So.
John Donnelly: I guess the other… the reconciliation is still, you know, we don't know. There's a lot of, members who are saying, this is not going to happen this year, and if it doesn't happen. nearly a quarter of the President's request is at risk. And so, that is a big TBD, the reconciliation package. Another TBD, and you said at the outset, this is a complicated picture, there's a few different pieces. Another TBD is a war supplemental for… to cover the costs of the operations in the Persian Gulf, as well as those in Venezuela. And in the, you know, the Caribbean, counter-drug operations. So, the Pentagon is reportedly working on a supplemental request. House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers told me yesterday he thinks it'll be about $35 billion, but we'll see about that. He wasn't wedded to the dollar figure. But that, too, is something that is presumably going to be arriving on Capitol Hill fairly soon. So those are the, sort of, the pieces that are out there.
Andrew Clevenger: John, as you mentioned, the House Armed Services Committee marked up its NDAA last week in a very long session. We were all part of our coverage for that. Rebecca, the Do you see, any issues that could, make passage of the, House NDAA, a little bit more challenging than perhaps its supporters would like?
Rebecca Kheel: For sure. So, we already saw some of those issues emerge during, the committee markup itself. As John mentioned, the House Armed Services Committee marked up to the President's base budget request of about $1.1 trillion. Democrats thought that that was ridiculously high, and they did offer an amendment during the committee markup to slash about $150 billion from that top line. However, that amendment failed, and when it came to the final vote, to advance the bill out of committee. 12 Democrats actually voted against advancing the bill out of the committee, which is a lot more than we normally see vote against the NDAA in committee. Normally, it's a pretty… that's still a lopsided vote, but normally it's just one or two members voting against it in committee. So I do think we will continue to see the top line be an issue as the bill moves to the floor.
Rebecca Kheel: We also could see some of these culture war issues that have popped up in recent years popping up again. In committee, the, two amendments were added, that have been issues in previous years. One of them was the issue of Confederate base names. Of course, several years ago, Congress, passed an amendment requiring the Pentagon to remove Confederate names from military bases. The Pentagon carried that out during the Biden administration, but when the Trump administration came in, they changed the names back to the former names of the bases. Last year's NDAA had an amendment that required the base names to be changed back again to the non-Confederate names. That ended up getting taken out of the bill before it was signed into law, but now we have an amendment again in the NDA that would again say the base names have to be changed back. to the non-Confederate names. So that could continue to be an ongoing issue, and we'll see how that back and forth shakes out again this year.
Andrew Clevenger: I mean, it's been likened to ping pong, right?
Rebecca Kheel: Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Clevenger: back and forth.
Rebecca Kheel: Exactly.
Andrew Clevenger: But the cost of changing names, it's not nothing, right? These costs add up.
Rebecca Kheel: Yes, yeah, yeah, every time you change the name, you have to change out all the signage, all the websites, that ends up, you know, being… a couple billion dollars, if I remember correctly, from the first time they did this, so…
Andrew Clevenger: And there was another big name change under discussion.
Rebecca Kheel: Yes, yes, thank you, thank you for bringing that up. The Trump administration, of course, has recently been taken to calling the Department of Defense the Department of War. However, it is Congress's prerogative to actually change the name. So right now, the Department of War is just a nickname. But the House Armed Services Committee, in its markup last week, approved an amendment that would formally change the name to the Department of War. So we'll see how that shakes out, too. Democrats were opposed to that as well, but I'm not sure if it's a hill anyone's gonna be willing to die on this year.
Andrew Clevenger: Yeah, there are, you know, other issues front of mind. John, you touched on the conflict with Iran before, but this must be, weighing on lawmakers pretty heavily as they're, going through their deliberations, both for an authorizing bill and for spending bills. Is the Iran war funding completely separate, or do the issues somehow tie together in terms of spending?
John Donnelly: I think they're going to be largely separate from a dollar perspective. The lawmakers are waiting for that supplemental request to arrive. They wanna, you know, those who want to enact it, would like it to come over ASAP, and to get it done ASAP, but, you know, I think… one of the reasons, if not the reason, that it has not come over, is that they don't… they know that a lot of Democrats are going to vote against it, because it's going to be considered to be, effectively a vote for or against the war itself. And so there's gonna… it's gonna have… it's gonna be difficult to pass because of, because of democratic, opposition.
John Donnelly: And in terms of how the war affects the authorizing and appropriations bills, like I say, it's pretty much of a separate thing, although, you know, one of the big, if not the biggest, cost of the war is the cost of the munitions that are being expended. And, the underlying bills have plenty of money to buy new munitions, and for multi-year procurement authority for a number of different types of weapons. Offensive weapons and defensive anti-missile interceptors, for example, and just regular old bombs. so… But… so there's a lot of that in the… in the base budget bills, but there will be more in whatever, Iran supplemental… I guarantee it's not for certain, because we haven't seen it, but it's almost certain that there will be a lot of money for replacing munitions in that Iraq… excuse me, Iran war supplemental.
Andrew Clevenger: Rebecca, did the… did the House, NDAA try to address the Iran war in any way?
Rebecca Kheel: A little bit. The, actually, during the Enblock amendment, there was an amendment that was added that would ask for a full accounting of the cost of the war. The Pentagon has, so far, estimated it's about $29 billion, but they've acknowledged that that doesn't include some of the costs, particularly the Pentagon has said they're not calculating damage to bases yet, because they think that's too premature. However, this amendment that got added to the NDA would call for a full accounting, including the cost of the damage of the bases. There was also an effort during the committee markup to prevent any funding from going to the war until, or unless Congress specifically authorizes the war. That amendment failed. In, I believe, a party-line vote, but we could see some more of those efforts as the bill makes its way to the floor.
Rebecca Kheel: Separate, there's also this parallel effort to pass an Iran war powers resolution. Last week, the House did adopt a war powers resolution that would call on the President to end hostilities absent any sort of specific authorization. We're still waiting to see exactly what the Senate is gonna do with that. Several weeks ago, the Senate did advance its own version of an Iran War Powers resolution, but the chief sponsor of that resolution, Tim Kaine, is weighing his options now as to whether to press forward with more votes on his resolution, or to pivot over to the House resolution.
Andrew Clevenger: And in either case, a war powers resolution faces a pretty steep uphill climb, right, to actually have any effect on the president's decision-making ability, right?
Rebecca Kheel: Yes, so the House resolution was a concurrent resolution, which means it's likely not binding, so even if the Senate were to adopt it, it would not likely carry the weight of law. The Senate resolution is a joint resolution, so it would be binding, but that requires a signature of the President, who would almost definitely veto it. However, the supporters of the resolution say it still is important to influencing the president's decision, because if he sees Congress acting resoundly on this, that could affect his calculations.
Andrew Clevenger: And, you know, it's been a few weeks, but I… I haven't heard any rumblings that, any members are making much headway on an authorization of use for military force for Iran. Has that issue sort of taken a backseat temporarily?
Rebecca Kheel: Yes, it has as we, as these war powers resolutions progress, the… The senators who were pursuing an AUMF approach have sort of taken a backseat to see how these war powers, fights play out.
Andrew Clevenger: And…
John Donnelly: Yeah, I… I think the… I think the… one of the… because the administration is arguing that we are not, in fact, at war, which is, you know, there has been a ceasefire since mid-April, but as everyone knows, it's been a very tenuous ceasefire at best, and in the last couple days, it's gotten even more tenuous, or, So… but the argument that there is… there isn't a war going on right now has been, has helped, Republicans, to sort of say, okay, yeah, you're right, you know, there is an award to authorize. so that's kind of given them an out, at least temporarily.
John Donnelly: But, you know, we'll see what happens. If this… you know, war… wars have a way of transpiring in ways other than. folks plan. And, and so, what happens legislatively will be very much affected by what happens in the Persian Gulf. And it, you know, there's a… based on what's happening right now. there could be a… there could be an escalation, you know? It's already… it's already possibly begun.
Andrew Clevenger: And all these votes take up precious floor time, right? Which is hard to come by, even under ideal circumstances. Rebecca, what kind of timelines are we looking at for NDAA and maybe some of the spending bills as we look ahead?
Rebecca Kheel: So, the NDA, as I believe John already alluded to, the House is expected to take it up before the July 4th recess. We'll see what the Senate plans to do once the Senate Armed Services Committee is done with its markup this week. As far as appropriations are concerned, again, I think as John already alluded to, the House Appropriations Committee is kind of kicking off the Defense Appropriations markup this week with the subcommittee markup, and then next week, we're expecting the full committee to take it up, and then we'll see from there what the timeline is from getting it on the floor. Meanwhile, over on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Rebecca Kheel: I'm sorry, the light has been, one sec? There. Sorry, the light was motion-activated. Of course, there has to be a hiccup.
Andrew Clevenger: You sit much too still.
Rebecca Kheel: That's too small.
Andrew Clevenger: Talk more with your hands, please.
Rebecca Kheel: Yes, Sorry, as I was saying, the Senate Appropriations Committee is kind of at a full standstill on all their appropriations processes while they negotiate some top lines, so we're not quite sure what's going to happen with that. But as you mentioned, the calendar is really compressed this year. We have… In addition to having to… juggle all these other potential, like, authorizing votes and war powers votes. It is an election year, which means they're gonna be taking a recess for all of October. Then they do come back in November, but depending on how the election shakes out, that could change the calculus as to whether one party wants to take up some of these appropriations bills or not.
Andrew Clevenger: Yes, and… but the NDAA is one of those bills that is passed every year, so even post-election, at some point, we think that they'll get around to voting on that and then get it enacted. The streak is, what, 63? It's over 60 years at this point?
John Donnelly: This would be the 66th year.
Andrew Clevenger: 66. Wow. Not many… not many bills in Congress can… can say that. So… John, as we look ahead, Rebecca alluded to, and our colleagues on the appropriations team have done some reporting on this, right now, it feels like Republican appropriators and Democratic appropriators in the Senate Are… cannot get on the same page, even in terms of, sort of, a top line, and even in terms of, sort of. how much should be allotted towards various spending measures. what happens if we… if… what happens if Congress can't, get on the same page and actually pass some appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year in September 30th?
John Donnelly: Yeah, well, continuing resolutions have been the norm in Congress, for years now. I can't remember how many years in a row. It might not be in a row, there might have been a year or two where they… where they passed the spending bills on time, but we're talking a couple decades of this being the norm. So, it's a pretty safe bet that they will not break that pattern this year, that they're not going to get their spending bills done, especially the Pentagon spending bill. By the, September 30th, deadline. And so, yeah, there has been a heck of a lot of… partisan recriminations among appropriators recently. And this is an election year, and so, you know, I would, I would not expect that to get much better in the next couple of months, even if they did have a lot of time, which they don't. And so, we'll almost certainly have, at best, a CR, although some, such as Senator John Kennedy. in a floor speech yesterday, and some comments in a, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing are predicting a shutdown. And I think that's not such a bad, bet. I think, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, seems to have, you know, he got a lot of heat in his party for conceding a year or two ago. on… on a shutdown, and he has been… his spine has stiffened since then. And so, shutdown is… which, you know, used to be sort of the Republican modus operandi, is now something that both parties are using to sort of, press their cases on one issue or another. And so, I think it's a pretty safe bet that we might have a shutdown this year of some length, don't know how long, and that even if that ends, there will be a CR that will probably extend into the next calendar year, because after the elections, especially if Democrats do well, and maybe, maybe even take control of the House, and less, possibly, the Senate. they will be less inclined to make concessions, knowing that their hand is going to be strengthened in the next year. And so, there's all… all the factors seem to be driving in favor of delay, and in favor of further partisan gridlock. So, I wouldn't be surprised if we are still talking about fiscal 2027 defense appropriations, in… in… January, February, March of next year. And possibly even another year-long CR for the Defense Department, which would only be the second that they've ever had. So, it's not a pretty picture, it's a mess, and, you know, the war supplemental. is another element there, and the reconciliation, you know, wild card, complicates it even further. And so… It's just… a lot of… a lot of, messy stuff ahead.
Andrew Clevenger: And, to your point, in the Senate, needing 60 votes to break a possible filibuster, with 53 Republicans currently in the Senate. you know, they need a handful, not a small handful, but a, you know, sizable chunk of Democrat support to get to that 60-vote threshold, right?
John Donnelly: Yep, exactly, yeah. It's… math is not in their favor, and of course, you know, the majorities in the House are razor thin, depending on who's showing up on any given day. And it's probably worth noting that, you know. the… the… barring a big surprise, the majorities are going to be pretty thin in the next Congress, too. You know, the country's pretty evenly divided, and so, yes, Democrats' hand may be strengthened next year, but probably not by all that much.
Andrew Clevenger: Now… it seems like in both chambers of Congress, of course you have Republican majorities, slim Republican majorities, but with control of each chamber, they can set the agenda, and we've seen, as we've been discussing, the authorizing committees and the appropriations committees basically going along with the Trump budget request. But, John, you covered yesterday, there were some pretty noteworthy comments made by two senior Republican appropriators regarding budget reconciliation. Can you parse that a little bit? Like, why aren't they getting… why aren't they getting in line and on board with a budget reconciliation that's defense-centric?
John Donnelly: Yeah, well, yeah, the… they don't like it for a couple reasons, and Mitch McConnell's been very vocal about this for some time. Especially him, but not only him. And one reason is what I mentioned briefly in my opening comments, which is that this is not a regular part of the ongoing defense budget that's in reconciliation. It's for a year or two, or three, depending on what kind of money they have. I think… actually, I think according to the rules, they have a few years to spend it. But anyway, it's a temporary infusion, right? It's not necessarily something that's going to continue, and so they don't like it for that reason. But frankly, they also don't like it probably because they don't control it. The Armed Services Committee write the bill. The proprietors do not. And so they automatically, you know, probably it raises some hackles.
John Donnelly: Over there among appropriators. But, be that as it may, it was… so far, for months now, since the $350 billion defense reconciliation package was requested, you've been hearing rumblings of, this is unlikely to happen, or this is going to be challenging, and that sort of thing. Well, all of a sudden, yesterday, it went from this may not happen to… this will not happen. And not just the message changing, but then who's delivering it. Mitch McConnell, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman, and Susan Collins, who chairs the full committee, the two most senior Republican appropriators, saying, not… we don't think this might not happen, but this will not happen.
John Donnelly: And, so that was definitely noteworthy. Also, John Thune today was asked about reconciliation, and, he gave about as tepid endorsement of it as you can imagine. It was something to the effect of, well, we just don't know whether there might be the votes for that, and it depends on what's in it, and we shall see, that kind of thing. Not… this is key to the President's defense priorities. This is an important measure that we must pass. And I'll do everything in my power to make it happen. No, you didn't hear that, right? And so, to me, sometimes what they don't say, or how they don't say it, is as important as what they say, and I think this is an example of that.
John Donnelly: So, but there is definitely… there's a House-Senate divide on this, too. There's not only an authorizers-appropriators divide, but it seems like the Senate's a lot cooler to it than some folks in the House. But we still don't know when the House plans on moving on… on their… they have to do a budget resolution first, as part of the process. And, and then get to the reconciliation itself. So… I don't know when this is supposed to happen. Or, of course, whether it's gonna happen.
Andrew Clevenger: And as Rebecca described earlier, there's just not a lot of floor time left in this legislative year.
John Donnelly: Yup.
Andrew Clevenger: Rebecca. One thing that was sort of notable in its absence from this morning's defense appropriations bill that the House Appropriations Committee released was any funding for Ukraine. how, you know, how does Ukraine fit into all of this? Because we've seen some votes recently that seem to be more pro-Ukraine than most of the recent jargon. So, help us understand that.
Rebecca Kheel: There is still strong bipartisan support for Ukraine, though you are right that we have seen these bills come out, these appropriations bills, the NDAA, without that funding for Ukraine. But last week, we did see a bill move in the House. that would provide some support for Ukraine, as well as, slap some stricter sanctions on Russia. The only reason that bill got to the House floor, though, was because a discharge petition, which is a mechanism that the minority party or anyone can use to force a vote on a bill that leadership doesn't want to bring forward. The discharge petition itself only got a few GOP signatures, but then when they got to the vote on the underlying bill, there was a lot more support from Republicans for that bill, and it passed pretty resoundingly out of the House. Now, we do… I still have to wait to see what the Senate does, we've been hearing from the sponsors of the Senate version of a Russia-sanctions Ukraine aid bill, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, that, you know, they're working on it, TBD on what exactly happens, but that's been the same line for months, so we're still watching, but… But we're not quite sure what's gonna happen yet.
John Donnelly: Yeah, I can…
Andrew Clevenger: Sorry, John, go ahead.
John Donnelly: Okay, I just want to throw in a couple of things on that. Unless I'm mistaken, the Ukraine… the Russia sanctions Ukraine support measure does not contain any appropriations. It's an authorization to spend more money aiding Ukraine, so you still need to find the money for that.
John Donnelly: Now, the Defense Appropriate… the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, you're correct, did not include money for Ukraine in this markup, but recall, last year, they didn't either. And in fact, at the full committee markup, there was an amendment to put some money in there, and Republicans voted against that. And Ken Calvert, the chairman of the subcommittee, stood up and said. I want this money to be enacted, but I also want the bill to pass, and I don't want anything to complicate that. So, they've… they left it in to the… they left it up to the House-Senate Conference writing the final Defense Appropriations bill for fiscal 2026, and they put $400 million in there for Ukraine And so, just because the House Defense Appropriators didn't include money today, or in the markup that they're going to do tomorrow, and then the full committee next week, doesn't mean that the appropriators are not going to provide money for Ukraine, because Rebecca's right, there are still, despite the rhetoric from the White House, there are bipartisan majorities in this Congress in both chambers, that support helping This besieged country. So I just wanted to, point some of that… some of that out about… about Ukraine.
Andrew Clevenger: Well, I think that is a good place to end. As we've discussed, there's a lot of different issues at play, both in the funding picture and in the authorizing picture. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you both so much for walking us through this, and thank you everyone who's been tuning in. We'll see you at CQ Roll Call.