Senate advances Trump megabill with $150B in defense funds

WASHINGTON — The Senate narrowly passed Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” today, a sprawling GOP-backed megabill containing a $150 billion boost to defense that will be necessary for defense budgets to reach $1 trillion in fiscal 2026.

The bill moved forward in a 51-50 vote that required Vice President JD Vance to make the tiebreaking vote, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina opposing the measure.

To enable passage of the controversial legislation, Republicans are using a process called budget reconciliation to avoid getting caught in a Democratic filibuster. However, even with Republicans able to advance the bill without Democrat votes, GOP leaders have struggled to get its membership onboard, with moderate Republicans and fiscal hawks at odds over how the bill approaches subjects such as the national deficit and spending cuts to programs like Medicaid.

Passing the legislation required an all-night session of the Senate on Monday to get through a long list of amendments, as well as meetings between Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a key Republican holdout who eventually supported the bill.

Defense spending was never a contentious subject in the sprawling bill, which President Donald Trump wants to see on his desk before July 4. The bill will now go to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson will be under pressure to get it though despite spending changes in the Senate version that are likely to rankle House Freedom Caucus members.

Although the spending contained in the bill can be spread out through multiple years, the Pentagon hopes to employ $113 billion of the defense funds in FY26 in order to pay for major weapons investments, including 16 naval ships and a $25 billion down payment on the Golden Dome missile shield.

The Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled its version of the defense portion of the reconciliation bill in early June. It contains fewer ships, more money for munitions funding, and less spending on the border than its House counterpart.

Last week, SASC released an updated version of the bill that eradicated funding for classified programs, adding $600 million for an Air Force long range strike aircraft and $500 million for a Navy long range strike aircraft — two efforts that were not included in prior variants of the bill and do not appear to be publicly-known programs. The updated bill also included $1 billion for the X–37B space plane and $3.6 billion for US military satellites and capability to protect those satellites.

Roman Schweizer, an analyst with TD Cowen, calculated that the SASC reconciliation bill total equates to about $156 billion — more than the $150 billion allotted by the House and Senate Budget Committees and contained in the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the bill.