The House passed its annual defense and national security package on Wednesday afternoon, marking the first signs of progress toward completing the 2026 fiscal year budget since the record-long shutdown in October.
The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 312-112 vote. More than 100 Democrats voted in favor of the bill while 18 Republicans voted against.
But the vote didn’t come without challenges.
The initial procedural hurdles posed a major test for GOP leaders who had to wrangle some of their most stubborn rank-and-file members to advance the package to a final vote — an effort that took more than an hour on the House floor.
The House narrowly approved a procedural vote known as the rules package, which sets the parameters for debate for each bill coming to the floor. The rules vote must pass in order for the underlying bills to be brought to the floor for simple majority votes.
Regardless of what the final legislative package entails, the rules vote is traditionally considered based on party lines. Meaning, even though a majority of Democrats helped in the final vote for the NDAA, the minority party voted against the rules package — leaving it up to Republicans with their slim majority to advance the package.
With his current margins, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., could only afford to lose two votes before the rule would fail. That seemed all but impossible as the afternoon dragged on as five House Republicans voted against the procedural hurdle — prompting last-ditch conversations with GOP leaders as they kept the vote open.
In the end, only one Republican remained a no: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Even with some of those holdouts supporting the rule, many of those Republicans ended up voting against the defense package in the final vote.
The GOP opposition comes amid complaints that the NDAA includes additional military aid to Ukraine, and the package doesn’t include a central banking digital currency ban, which was a major push among conservatives in the House.
The $900 billion package was unveiled over the weekend after weeks of negotiations between the House and Senate, coming in about $8 billion higher than the initial budget request from President Donald Trump.
The NDAA itself is not a spending bill as it does not allocate federal funding. However, it outlines priorities for the Pentagon and authorizes what the Defense Department can do with its budget.
The 3,086-page bill encompasses multiple provisions aimed toward strengthening security at the southern border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and undoing certain Pentagon policies enacted during the Biden administration that current officials consider to be “woke ideology.”
The bill codifies at least 15 of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including those related to building physical barriers and deploying more troops to the southern border; constructing the Golden Dome missile defense system; and modernizing the development of weapons, among other things.
The NDAA also includes a 4% pay raise for all service members, as has become commonplace every year, and it reinstates merit-based promotions and admissions to service academies.
The bill now heads to the Senate for consideration where it must be passed before being sent to Trump’s desk.