The week of June 1 marked forward progress in the House and a lack of progress in the Senate. The House passed the Interior and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bills out of full committee and unveiled its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (LHHS) and Homeland Security (DHS) bills for subcommittee markup. We will see reports for those bills released on June 8 and June 9 respectively. The House also considered its second appropriations bill on the floor. The Agriculture/Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bill passed by a vote of 213-210, with just four Democrats voting for the measure. Not nearly as bipartisan as MilConVA.
In the Senate, we had an initial false start as the Legislative Branch, Agriculture/FDA, and Commerce Justice and Science (CJS) bills were scheduled to be marked up and ultimately pulled from Committee consideration. This is likely due to a combination of the Reconciliation 2.0 vote-a-rama series and controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.
Key Highlights
- House Appropriators continue to make progress on a partisan basis while Senate Appropriators have postponed markups.
- House and Senate NDAA authorization levels are important indicators of where defense spending could be headed.
- The Bipartisan Policy Center gives us a predicted X date.
The House
Last week, the House lined up two more funding bills for consideration: LHHS and DHS. LHHS passed out of subcommittee on a party-line vote and DHS passed by voice note, leaving only the Defense bill’s topline yet to be released. This is perhaps the most interesting 302b (subcommittee allocation) of the 12, given the historic level of defense funding requested by the Trump administration for FY 2027.
During the House Armed Service Committee’s consideration of its Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), one of the Democrats their first amendments cut the bill’s topline authorization by $150 billion, with some noting they wished the amendment cut more. That amendment unsurprisingly failed along mostly partisan lines, with one Democrat voting yes. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole has said he wants to see what number the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) NDAA lands on before deciding his appropriations total for defense spending, so this proposed authorization level is likely a roadmap.
Senate Postponement
As noted, the Senate Appropriations committee punted consideration of its first three bills for FY 2027: Agriculture, CJS and Legislative Branch. It is not unheard of for partisan clashes to impact the Senate’s markup schedule; the Senate Committee has smaller margins than the House and generally prefers to move bills on as bipartisan of a basis as possible. But the combination of a Reconciliation 2.0 vote-a-rama series and the Department of Justice’s (funded in CJS) “anti-weaponization fund” made moving the bills impractical.
It is important for readers to remember that there is no overall funding agreement between Ranking Member Murray and Chair Collins. This means the underlying 302(b) subcommittee allocations for the 12 bills have not been agreed to on a bipartisan basis. Typically, the Committee reaches a topline deal before markups begin, whether publicly or privately. While a lack of bipartisan agreement creates no issue for reconciliation, it is a roadblock for regular appropriations bills given the 60-vote threshold.
What to Watch
While LHHS is scheduled for June 9 in the House, Chairman Cole has said he reserves the right to move that markup to align with Defense later in the month, depending on when he gets agreement on topline totals. The Chairman’s stated goal is to have all 12 funding bills approved by the Committee by July 4.
Additionally, the likely absence of inclusion of requested defense mandatory funds in both the House and Senate NDAA toplines puts more pressure on Reconciliation 3.0 to materialize.
One More Thing
A new projection out of the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the United States will likely hit the debt limit sometime between late winter and mid-summer of 2027 without congressional action. The Department of the Treasury would invoke extraordinary measures lasting six to nine months. After that, we’d reach the X date (when the United States can no longer meet its financial obligations in full and on time). The last time Congress lifted the debt ceiling was last summer in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
