Could DoD buck ‘congressional intent’ on billions in reconciliation?

WASHINGTON — Days before the Senate took off on August recess, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked a handful of nominees for key Pentagon posts — including the official slated to become the department’s next comptroller — whether they would follow congressional guidance on implementing $150 billion in additional defense funding granted through the One Big Beautiful Bill reconciliation legislation. 

Michael Powers and the other nominees, like the two dozen other defense officials who had been asked the same question by SASC Chairman Roger Wicker over the past three months, responded in the affirmative.

Lawmakers don’t usually have to seek verbal commitments to ensure government officials spend money according to Congress’s direction, but the reconciliation bill puts defense dollars in uncharted territory. Not all funding in the reconciliation bill is tied to specific programs, giving the Defense Department more flexibility to move funds around — even if lawmakers have separately provided more specific guidance on exactly how they want that money spent.

And while Wicker told Breaking Defense that he’s confident the Pentagon won’t go rogue, his Democratic counterpart on the armed services committee isn’t so sure.

“My sense is they already have an idea of what they want to do, and they’ll try to do it,” Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed said recently. “Some of it will be consistent with what we’re doing, but some things, I think inevitably, will be their own initiatives, their own sense of what’s important, even if we don’t agree or don’t support it.”

Likewise, defense experts noted that while adhering to congressional direction tends to be the “default” position of the DoD, as American Enterprise Institute’s Todd Harrison put it, there is risk that despite their public pledges, Pentagon officials could shift money around.

“If there are specific things [lawmakers] want funded, or if they want the funding used in a specific way, they have to write it into the language of the bill, or there’s no guarantee,” said  Harrison. “In this administration, all bets are off in terms of adhering to norms,” he added.

As early as next week, Congress may have its first proof point for whether Defense Department officials will abide by their promises to follow congressional direction.

The Pentagon has an Aug. 22 deadline, set by Wicker and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, to “submit a spending, expenditure, or operating plan” for how reconciliation funds will be spent, according to a July 22 letter from the lawmakers that accompanied HASC and SASC funding guidance.

For its part, the Pentagon told Breaking Defense it’s working on it.

“The Department is diligently working to compile the requested information and develop a comprehensive plan that adheres to the requested level of detail,” a DoD spokesperson stated. “We value the partnership between the Department and Congress and remain committed to rebuilding our military, enhancing our defense industrial base, and building a lethal fighting force.”

Compliance With Congress Typically ‘Default Position’

The defense portion of the reconciliation bill lays out specific pots of money for big ticket programs like the Virginia-class submarine and the B-21 bomber and the Navy’s sixth-generation F/A-XX fighter. However, other spending — particularly for munitions, drone and counterdrone technologies, and mission systems such as radars — is referred to in broad terms within the legislation itself with no more specific mandate.

The House and Senate versions of the reconciliation bill originally included some stipulations meant to ensure oversight over those more flexible funding areas, such as mandating that the department provide a spending plan to Congress. 

But that language was stripped out of the bill before passage because it would have violated the Byrd Rule, which prevents lawmakers from including provisions in reconciliation bills that do not raise or lower spending, the Congressional Research Service stated in a July report. 

Instead, Rogers and Wicker sent DoD separate guidance for how they expected the money to be spent and requested more detailed information from officials about their spending plan — the plan with the Aug. 22 deadline – though adherence is not legally required.

In the meantime, then, there is value in the public pledges Wicker has received from officials, according to former Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord. He told Breaking Defense that even if they too are not legally binding, department officials who have made such pledges — which include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as well as most service secretaries and service chiefs — will not want to be seen as breaking their word with Congress.

Another major sign that the Pentagon will follow Congressional direction on reconciliation is the precedent set with the fiscal 2025 full-year continuing resolution, Harrison said. 

The department has largely abided by the spending recommendations issued by the House and Senate chairs of the defense appropriations subcommittees, although it notably moved funding between key programs such as the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, Collaborative Combat Aircraft drone wingmen and new Air Force One jets.

“There may be some deviations, but I think the default position of DoD is going to be to follow that guidance,” said Harrison. “DoD, it’s a big machine that operates on a lot of inertia.” 

Seamus Daniels, a budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the precedent of the FY25 CR shows that the department is willing to adhere to congressional guidance. 

“But I think, given that the guidance around the reconciliation funds is not as detailed, that leaves some room for flexibility still,” he added. 

A Qualified ‘Yes’?

However, despite the pledges from defense officials to follow Congress’s lead on reconciliation, experts noted that there’s already been some misalignment between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon on reconciliation money.

One of those examples came to a head during a SASC hearing on the FY26 budget on June 18, when Wicker noted that the Pentagon’s budget request already appeared to sidestep Congress’s plans for reconciliation funding for the Arleigh Burke destroyer program. Instead of buying a third destroyer in future years, as Congress had intended the reconciliation money to be used, the administration wanted to use it to buy two destroyers in FY26.

When Wicker asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth whether he would commit to following congressional guidance on reconciliation, Hegseth first seemed to hedge.

“Yes, our team looks forward to working with this committee, both through the budget process and reconciliation and would acknowledge just as the starting point of the conversation that we are looking at two bills and one budget in the defense department,” Hegseth replied. “So as we have discussions about allocation, we may sometimes be talking about different numbers because of that, but from our perspective, we built a budget tied to $960 billion.” 

“Are you qualifying your explicit ‘yes?’” Wicker asked. “Because we have not had that from any of the other witnesses that have come before us. If our congressional intent, alongside the numbers in reconciliation, is explicitly expressed, do you commit to following congressional intent unequivocally in reconciliation?”

“Yes,” Hegseth responded. “We just wanted to clarify the entirety of the budget from our perspective.”

The exchange demonstrated that the Trump administration and Congress had different intent for how reconciliation funds should be utilized. Congress wanted to provide “a one time boost, extra funding, [or] a catch up on defense programs” that would be additive to the spending typically included in the Pentagon’s base budget, while the administration viewed it as a “substitute” for money, Harrison said. 

Harrison also pointed out that the first Trump administration deferred funds for military construction projects and put it toward building the border wall. 

“So Congress shouldn’t be surprised if they find the administration, in some cases, may not follow their guidance,” he said. 

Even if the Pentagon sends a reconciliation spending plan to Capitol Hill by the Aug. 22 deadline, it may not have the level of detail that lawmakers are hoping to see, McCord said.

“If what was in the bill language [said that] a billion dollars is available for real property maintenance or missile defense … and my spend plan says I’m going to spend a billion dollars on real property maintenance and a billion dollars on missile defense, I have confirmed that I’m going to do what’s in the law. But haven’t given you any new information,” he said.

Another key question is whether Russell Vought, the powerful director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, steps in and directs changes to reconciliation funds. 

“Based on the track record so far of OMB interactions with the Appropriations Committee on spend plans and rescissions, I would be very nervous if I were the defense committees about strict adherence to plans and commitments,” McCord said. 

Holding DoD’s Feet ‘To The Fire’

One potential issue is that Congress and the Pentagon are caught in a kind of feedback loop regarding the many moving parts of the budget. McCord acknowledged that, if he were still comptroller, he would be consulting closely with OMB on the likelihood of another one-year continuing resolution, the flat defense budget proposed by the House, or the increased defense topline championed in the Senate — and he would want to preserve some wiggle room for the Defense Department on reconciliation funds depending on how the final budget ultimately shakes out. 

At the same time, should the Pentagon not provide enough details to Congress on its plans for reconciliation, lawmakers could pass more stringent legislation that erodes the flexibility of the reconciliation funds, he said.

One option already in motion by Congress is using this year’s defense policy bill as a legislative vehicle to obtain more information on reconciliation spending — this time, binding the Pentagon to provide information by law. HASC approved an amendment to its version of the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act, penned by Rogers, that would call for a spending plan with funding tables that have the same level of detail that Congress typically receives in the normal appropriations process.

With Congress unlikely to pass a final version of the NDAA until the end of the year, lawmakers have months where they can tweak statutory language about an implementation plan based on the level of cooperation and transparency they are seeing from the department, McCord said.

“If you’re happy, you can leave your implementation plan kind of less stringent. And if you’re not happy, then in conference, you can dial it up,” he said. 

Daniels added that Congress’s persistence in pursuing oversight for the reconciliation funds shows that this is an area where lawmakers want to be able to exert control. 

“The fact that Congress is holding DoD to the fire in terms of a spending plan — both in terms of the letter from Wicker and Rogers [demanding] a plan by Aug. 22, and then the other efforts that will require a spending plan, either through appropriations language or in the NDAA  — means that Congress really wants to enforce its intent,” Daniels said.

Overall, when speaking to Breaking Defense on July 31, Wicker appeared sanguine about the Pentagon’s potential to chart its own spending course, saying he’s “very confident” the DoD will abide by congressionally drawn spending guidance.

“Every witness that we’ve had before the committee this year has given us assurances on the record and testimony before Congress,” he said.