National Interest

by Elaine McCusker

    Congress’ reliance on stopgap funding may put the budding revival of the US military defense base and innovation on hold.

    As the August congressional recess approaches, the foundational task of the nation’s elected legislators to provide for the common defense remains undone. Rather than passing annual appropriations, congressional attention has already turned to stopgap spending bills. The House just passed one such measure that would extend current baseline funding and priorities from the end of the fiscal year on September 30 through December 4, offering a glimpse at the best-case scenario should Congress fail to pass the defense budget and emergency supplemental funding the nation needs.

    A 65-day continuing resolution would mean a loss of $1.7 billion per day in defense buying power, the difference between a continuing resolution extension of current funding and the budget needed for next year. Put another way, just one day of lost buying power would be enough to purchase 379 of the critically needed advanced Patriot air defense missiles. The full 65-day delay adds up to about a $788 loss per taxpayer in money that could and should, be going toward national security.

    The historic $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget request held great promise. The nearly $1 trillion 2026 budget, most of which Congress just passed 5 months ago, is starting to fix the long-standing strategy-resource mismatch for the nation’s military. Momentum is just now building through industrial base and supply chain revitalization, investments in unmanned systems and AI capabilities and capacity, a shipbuilding surge and overall modernization and readiness improvements.

    All that is about to come to a destructive and unnecessary halt unless Congress takes decisive action; Their efforts to date, while admirable, have not gotten the job done.

    In June, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee introduced a bill to fund part of next year’s military budget request. While again noting the difficulty of a two-bill strategy for defense that would provide part of the money through normal discretionary appropriations and part through a mandatory budget reconciliation bill, House defense appropriators released a bill with $1.1 trillion of base budget funding.

    The hundreds of pages of bill and committee report provisions and tables include support for the Defense Innovation Unit, the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies initiative, the Defense Autonomous Working Group and the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, all of which would advance autonomous systems, counter-unmanned aircraft systems and potentially AI‑enabled kill‑chain capabilities.

    The bill contains language encouraging new suppliers for low-cost munitions, signaling Congressional intent to open the door to non‑traditional vendors and alternative production approaches. The bill would also invest in numerous systems across all five warfighting domains—ground, air, sea, space and cyber.

    In the Senate, the Appropriations Committee heard from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Daniel Caine last month on the urgent need for emergency supplemental spending to cover unbudgeted costs that currently threaten to overtake modernization and readiness programs and activities. The conflict with Iran accounts for a large share of those unbudgeted costs ($37.5 billion), according to Secretary Hegseth. Generally consistent with my estimates, this funding would reimburse services that are struggling to fund operations and special pay while backfilling expended munitions and lost or damaged equipment.

    In chairing the session, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) made the crucial point that the military does not control what it is tasked with by its political masters. The debate over the value of the Iran War should be separated from support for servicemember requirements—now and in the future. General Caine succinctly summarized the urgency, saying that the funding was needed while we are still in the “window of opportunity” for it to matter. That goes for the supplemental request and the entire 2027 budget. Before training and exercises are canceled. Before modernization momentum is lost.

    That has been it so far from Congress on the military budget. A partial spending measure from a House committee and plenty of hearings. This is important work to be sure. But committee bills and hearings don’t amount to the outcome the nation and its uniform defenders need. Defense authorizers have made further progress—the full House passed a bill and the Senate Armed Services Committee produced one. These bills are important for the policy direction and authorizations they contain. But even if the bills had moved further toward enactment, you can’t spend an authorization. The Pentagon needs funding.

    What happens now  Without fast congressional action, nothing good. Not for the military. Not for national security. Not for the taxpayer.

    Congress must return from the August recess ready to put the nation’s security and its military above all other concerns and to pass both the required emergency spending and the full 2027 budget request before the end of the fiscal year and before asking voters to let them keep their jobs.