Reconciliation Breaks Decades of Bipartisanship

As Congress has continued to descend into partisan conflict and deadlock, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has remained an important bastion of bipartisanship. It sets the overall defense policy, which includes which programs are allowed to be funded, and serves as the basis for the budget set by the separate appropriations act. The NDAA provides authorization for subsequent appropriations for the Department of Defense. 

While few would argue that any NDAA has been perfect, since the first authorization act was passed for fiscal year 1962 Congress has never failed to produce an NDAA. Every year, with the passage of this act, Congress exercises not only its constitutional power of the purse but also its role in overseeing defense policy. 

Nonpartisanship in the defense budgeting process is almost as important as our tradition of civilian leadership of the military. As a critical part of the civilian leadership of our armed forces, members of Congress set aside their differences every year to collaborate on the best way to keep American citizens, troops, and the nation itself safe. Congress may have become too dysfunctional to pass all of the individual bills needed to fund other parts of the government on an annual basis, but it’s always managed to get the National Defense Authorization Act passed and our troops funded. 

But now, by pursuing a reconciliation bill supported exclusively by members of one party that adds $150 billion to the Pentagon budget, the 119th Congress is abandoning bipartisanship. It is diminishing its own ability to give proper consideration to spending and policy for the fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget, and it is setting us on a path of opaque, partisan defense policy and budgets for years to come.

Increasing Inefficiency 

For all the problems with using reconciliation to set defense policy and budgets, the benefits are slight. Adding an extra $150 billion for defense into the reconciliation bill still won’t get the bulk of the funds to the Pentagon before FY 2026. 

If Congress gets the reconciliation bill passed quickly, that leaves just over a quarter of FY 2025, which ends on September 30, before the next fiscal year begins. The president’s own FY 2026 budget request acknowledges that the vast majority of the funds ($119 billion) will  be spent in FY 2026, with an unknown amount spent in fiscal years 2027-2029. 

Instead of ramming through a partisan reconciliation bill, Congress should simply plan to allocate these funds as part of the normal FY 2026 budget process and provide guidance for how to use any major defense spending increases within the FY 2026 NDAA.

The drawbacks to using reconciliation are significant. Throwing half-baked defense policy and spending into a huge reconciliation bill triples the work Congress must do to direct and fund the Defense Department. Instead of working on one budget at a time, it has effectively been working on three: the continuing resolution for FY 2025 that was enacted on March 15, the reconciliation package that passed the House yesterday and is bound for the Senate, and the FY 2026 budget — whose deliberations should have started in earnest back in January. 

In other words, Congress still hasn’t finished this year’s authorization and appropriation, is behind on next year’s authorization and appropriation, and is spending all its energy trying to ram policy and spending changes through in a reconciliation bill. 

We would all be better served by Congress sticking to its statutory schedule, which would have them in the middle of producing the FY 2026 NDAA and appropriation acts now, so it can finish them by the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Changing Policy

In addition to making Congress less effective in both the short and the long term, invoking the reconciliation process to add $150 billion in military spending is also arguably unlawful, given that the changes in spending effectively represent changes in policy. 

Using the reconciliation process to change policy likely violates the “Byrd Rule,” which allows legislators or the Senate parliamentarian to move to strike any reconciliation measure deemed to enact policy rather than budget changes. There is ample precedent for the use of this rule: Motions to strike under the Byrd Rule have been sustained 25 out of the 35 times they were raised between 1985 and 2022.

One example of an abrupt change in military policy included in the reconciliation bill is the creation of the “Golden Dome” missile defense program proposed by President Donald Trump. Senate Arms Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) explicitly describes 25 billion dollars of the funds in the reconciliation bill as a “down payment on Golden Dome” — a program that didn’t exist when the FY 2025 NDAA was enacted on December 23 of last year. 

In the words of Cameron Tracy, research scholar at the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, “it represents a broad mission shift.” This shift has already provoked alarm from Russia and China, who in a joint statement called the plan “deeply destabilizing.”

Sidestepping Oversight

The president certainly has a role to play in defense policy, but so does Congress. And the typical defense budgeting process provides much of the infrastructure needed for Congress to play its constitutionally mandated oversight role in foreign policy. In particular, the formal budget process provides members of Congress extensive access to military leadership so they can ask questions to inform the budget, which will help shape military and foreign policy. 

The role of bipartisan, informed oversight is a critical part of the authorization and appropriation process. It is particularly necessary this year, given that both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief of naval operations began their tenures after the FY 2025 NDAA was enacted. The chairman, in particular, normally provides continuity across presidential administrations: Their four-year term begins October 1 of odd years. It’s important for Congress to have a chance to meet with these leaders when policies as significant as nuclear defense go through dramatic changes.

Passing a defense budget is a big job, and it generally takes almost nine months and a total of twenty subcommittees to create and pass the authorization and appropriations acts. These aren’t small documents: Last year’s NDAA was nearly 800 pages, and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act another 60. The time it takes to pass them gives members of both parties the use of committee staffs to address the many questions raised by the many challenges associated with safeguarding our country. 

The numerous hearings and negotiations among committee members give both parties the opportunity to be heard and to influence the outcome of the final bills. When they do so on time — before the beginning of the fiscal year these bills cover — it gives the Defense Department a full year to carry out that guidance and to spend the money relatively efficiently.

An Alarming Precedent

Given the complexity and high stakes, it’s surprising how unified Congress has been around the Pentagon budgeting process — especially the NDAA. To be clear, the process certainly has its problems. But shifting to a less transparent, more partisan process won’t make it better. Since FY 1962, the NDAA has never failed to pass, and for at least the last quarter century, always with a filibuster proof majority. The majority party, of course, has greater influence than the minority party, but it’s hard to make the argument that the minority party has ever been steamrolled, nor that the majority party stymied by a filibuster. In short, the NDAA is a rare example of the legislative branch rising above partisanship and getting the job done. 

After the last Congress passed the FY 2025 NDAA, the 119th Congress is effectively asking for a “do over” through reconciliation on spending that should have been settled nearly nine months ago. This represents what some House Democrats have called “a partisan budget reconciliation gimmick.”

If Congress is going to fulfill its constitutional duty to oversee the Defense Department’s policies as well as its purse, it must return to regular and timely negotiation of the National Defense Authorization Act. It must pass both the NDAA and the appropriations act for FY 2026, ideally by September 30, 2025, and avoid using reconciliation or otherwise bypassing the statutorily required work of defense budgeting. 

Then, the real progress toward defense reform and policy development can begin.