Review – Senate Passes HR 3944 – FY 2026 MilCon Spending Bill

On Friday the Senate started debate on amendments to HR 3944, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026. The amendments considered were based upon the substitute language (SA 3411 see discussion below) offered by Sen Collins (R,Me). After adopting 22 amendments (none of specific interest here) and rejecting six, the Senate passed the amended bill by a strongly bipartisan vote of 87 to 9 (2 Republicans, 6 Democrats, and 1 Independent voted Nay, so bipartisan opposition as well).

Substitute Language

Collins had proposed several version of the substitute language amendment over the last two weeks (see here, here, and here for brief discussions about some of the alternatives), but the final version set forth in SA 3411 included three divisions:

Division A – MilCon spending

Division B – ARD spending, and

Division C – Legislative Branch spending

Thus, this bill, if passed in the House and signed by the President would cover a quarter of the twelve spending bills that need to be passed by September 30^th, 2025 (see the discussion below). That would then require a continuing resolution to keep the remainder of the government in operation past October 1^st.

Moving Forward

The bill will head back to the House (who will not be back in Washington until September). There the House will have five options:

• Ignore the Senate version of HR 3944, pass a complete government continuing resolution before October 1^st, 2025,

• Vote for the Senate version, and then pass a rest-of-the-government CR before October 1^st,

• Vote against the Senate version, and request a conference committee, do not pass a revised version before October 1^st, but pass a complete government continuing resolution before October 1^st,

• Vote against the Senate version, and request a conference committee, pass a revised version before October 1^st, and then pass a rest of the government CR before October 1^st, or

• Do not pass anything and shut down the government.

Commentary

The radical-right Republicans are not going to support the Senate version of HR 3944. It does not cut anywhere near enough spending, and it does not include any of the policy riders favored by that fringe. Speaker Johnson is going to have to use Democratic votes to accept the Senate amendments to HR 3944 (or a conferenced version of that bill).

While he has been successful in the past doing that, it does not mean that he will be able to continue to drink from that well. The big question will be does he have the support of the President? I have not seen any commentary on that question and any direction from that source could easily change in the more than a month left before the House could possibly take up the issue. I suspect, however, that if Johnson wants to avoid a shutdown, an early adoption of the Senate language for HR 3944 would give him the best chance to reach a deal with Democrats for a continuing resolution with the least objectionable language for the Republican base. The longer he waits, the harder it is going to be to be to reach a workable compromise on the CR.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/senate-passes-hr-3944-fy-2026-milcon - subscription required.