HR 3944 Passed in House – FY 2026 MilCon Spending

This afternoon, after a little more than two hours of debate and processing amendments, the House passed HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026, by a vote of 218 to 206. Two Democrats {Rep Golden (D,ME) and Rep Perez (D, WA)} voted Aye, no Republican vote Nay.

This is the first of potentially twelve spending bills that should be passed in both the House and Senate before September 30^th, 2025. The near party-line vote would seem to indicate that the bill would not be able to pass in the Senate where 60 votes are needed for passage. But the Senate almost never votes on the House version of a spending bill. Senate language (not yet crafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee) is typically offered as substitute language and amendments are then made to the revised version. A conference committee is then supposed to work out the differences between the two bills with subsequent votes in the House and Senate to pass the conference version of the bill.

Except, that has not happened in years. The House will probably pass six to ten of the 12 spending bills. The Republicans will not be able to put together a working majority to pass the remainder of the bills. It is still an open question if the Senate will take up any of the spending bills. Come the last week in September, if recent history is any guide, the House will offer up a continuing resolution to continue funding the government at something close to the FY 2025 spending amounts. At the end of the calendar year (or maybe even later than that) an agreement of some sort of compromise omnibus spending bill will be reached, and the process will start all over again for the FY 2027 spending bill.

But this year we have the Republicans in nominal control of both the House and Senate, as well the White House, so there is a chance that we will see something different happen. I do not think so, but you never can tell.