House passes 2027 defense bill 216–212 after voter-ID measure splits the usual bipartisan vote
The U.S. House of Representatives passed its annual defense policy bill on July 22, 2026, by a vote of 216 to 212, sending the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 to the Senate.
The bill, H.R. 8800, would authorize appropriations for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, and would set military personnel strength levels for the year. The National Defense Authorization Act is passed every year to set defense policy and authorize spending levels; it does not itself provide the money, which is handled separately in appropriations bills. On the House floor, Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers of Alabama said the bill authorizes $1.15 trillion to match President Trump's budget request and is focused on rebuilding the defense industrial base, which he said had “atrophied significantly” over three decades. Supporters also said the bill includes a targeted pay raise weighted toward junior servicemembers and expands access to military childcare and healthcare.
The relatively narrow margin was unusual for a defense bill that typically passes with broad support from both parties. Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, said the NDAA “has passed for 65 consecutive years because of disciplined avoidance of irrelevant hyperpartisan amendments.” He objected that the rule for considering the bill merged it with what he called “a completely nongermane voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act,” and said that merger should be stripped from the bill or removed later in negotiations with the Senate. Under the rule the House adopted, upon passage of H.R. 8800 the Clerk was directed to add the text of the SAVE America Act — which the House had passed separately as S. 1383 — to the defense bill before transmitting it to the Senate.
Some Democrats objected to the level of spending and to other policy in the measure. Representative John Garamendi of California said he had voted against the bill in committee and would again, arguing that it “cannot continue to increase military spending while the administration unilaterally misuses our Armed Forces at home and abroad,” and calling the overall amount “an outrageous and dangerously irresponsible amount of spending.”
Republican supporters framed the bill as a response to growing threats. Representative Jack Bergman of Michigan, chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, said the committee had fulfilled its “constitutional duty” and was “delivering on President Trump's request to authorize the first of two defense appropriations, including this authorization of $1.15 trillion.” During two days of floor consideration, the House adopted some amendments and rejected others, including a proposal that would have required the Department of Defense to report on options for cutting 200,000 civilian jobs, which failed 175 to 254. The bill now goes to the Senate, whose Armed Services Committee has advanced its own version, S. 4784. Rogers told the House that passage was “just a single step in a long process” and that the two chambers would continue to work toward “a bill that can best pass both Chambers and be signed into law.”
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