The 3,000-page legislation includes a 4% pay raise for enlisted troops but does not include a bipartisan proposal aimed at boosting military housing construction that some lawmakers had hoped to include in the final version, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said the measure furthers President Trump’s agenda by “ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos.”
The bill represents a compromise between versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed earlier this year by the Senate and House, both led by Trump’s Republican Party. In May, Trump requested $892.6 billion for fiscal year 2026, keeping spending flat with the 2025 budget. That request covered funding for the Department of Defense and other national security-related agencies. The House bill met that figure, while the Senate advocated $925 billion.
The NDAA authorizes Pentagon programs but does not provide actual funding; separate legislation is required to allocate spending for the fiscal year ending in September 2026.
Alongside standard provisions for military equipment procurement and efforts to counter China and Russia, this year’s bill emphasizes cutting programs criticized by Trump, including diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. It also authorizes the deployment of troops to the U.S. southwest border to help intercept undocumented immigrants and drug trafficking. Additionally, it repeals two prior Iraq war authorizations from 1991 and 2002.
Because it is considered “must-pass” legislation, the NDAA remains one of the few major bills that Congress approves annually and has passed consistently for more than 60 years. Typically negotiated privately for weeks by both parties, this year’s talks were significantly more partisan.
Several Democrats threatened to delay the bill over Trump’s use of the military in U.S. cities, until Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, a Republican, agreed to hold a hearing on the matter this week. Earlier in the year, Republicans defeated Democratic attempts to block the deployment of U.S. military forces to dometic cities and to prevent the conversion of a luxury Qatari jet into a replacement Air Force One.
