Saturday, October 18, 2025
Saturday, October 18, 2025
The House voted 218-214 today to pass a massive budget reconciliation bill that includes numerous tax, immigration and energy provisions, including $150 billion for the Defense Department.
The bill will now be sent to President Trump to be signed into law.
The White House was counting on passage of the bill as a way to increase defense spending in fiscal year 2026 by $113 billion as its regular appropriations request is flat when compared to what Congress enacted in FY-25.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) praised the bill’s passage.
“The One Big, Beautiful Bill makes a historic and long overdue investment of $150 billion to achieve President Trump's Peace Through Strength agenda and restore American deterrence,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait any longer to begin rebuilding our military capacity, launching the future of American defense, and supercharging American manufacturing.”
The only Republicans to vote against the bill were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).
Democrats, who have long opposed the legislation because of its cuts to social programs and its significant increases to the deficit, uniformly voted against the bill following a record-breaking speech on the House floor from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) that last more than eight hours.
“We’ve got to fight a lot of battles on behalf of the American people," Jeffries said. “This is just one of them, but we wanted to make sure that the American people had an opportunity to fully and more completely understand, in the light of day, just how damaging this one big, ugly bill will be to the American people.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the bill is a product of the election that sent Trump to the White House last November.
"This big, beautiful bill fulfills all the promises in the America First agenda," he said. "It is the people's bill, it is made for and shaped by the most diverse coalition of American voters in American history."