The House on Friday passed 217-198 its annual defense spending bill for fiscal 2025, with appropriators rebuffing intense bipartisan pressure from their colleagues over attack submarine and F-35 fighter jet purchases.
The $833 billion laws would buy additional F-35s beyond the Pentagon’s budget request while only procuring one Virginia-class attack submarine for FY25 as an alternative of the standard two vessels the bill normally provides.
The procurement plans put the bill at odds with large swaths of lawmakers on the Armed Services Committee who drafted the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, which would scale back F-35 purchases below the Pentagon’s requested levels and partially fund a second Virginia-class submarine.
“The one method to prevent Chinese aggression is by fielding and operating capability that show America’s military advantage,” defense appropriations Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said on the House floor on Thursday. “To this end, the bill increases investments in fifth and sixth generation aircraft, procures deliverable capability, including several [Indo-Pacific Command] unfunded priorities.”
“This bill procures where we are able to, trains where we must and spend money on capabilities that may make our adversaries get up day-after-day and say ‘today shouldn’t be the day to impress the US of America.”
The spending bill would procure 76 recent F-35s, eight greater than the 68 requested by the Defense Department. Conversely, the National Defense Authorization Act – which the House passed 217-199 earlier this month – would cut F-35 procurement right down to 58 aircraft.
The House Rules Committee, which oversees amendment votes, opted not to carry a vote on a proposed bipartisan amendment that may have reduced F-35 purchases within the spending bill. This prompted a pointy rebuke from Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the highest Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, amid mounting frustration on Capitol Hill with manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
“At a projected total lifecycle cost of over $2 trillion dollars, the F-35 is the most important program in DoD history despite routinely not meeting cost, schedule, and performance metrics,” Smith said in a Wednesday statement with Rep. Donald Norcross of Recent Jersey, the highest Democrat on the tactical air and land forces panel.
“That is unacceptable program execution and Congress mustn’t reward this behavior by buying additional aircraft above the President’s budget request.”
The spending bill also overrides the Armed Services Committee on Virginia-class submarine procurement for FY25, along with the F-35 purchases. Appropriators have sided with the Navy, which requested only one attack submarine purchase for FY25, as a result of production delays amid industrial base constraints. In contrast, the National Defense Authorization Act sought incremental funding for a second Virginia-class vessel.
“We’ve to rebuild the economic base to ensure that us to construct submarines,” Calvert told Defense News earlier this month. “I would like more submarines. But to ensure that us to get there, now we have to rebuild the economic base to get the mandatory workforce to construct the submarines. So we’re specializing in fixing the issue to ensure that us to construct more submarines.”
The choice comes despite intense pressure from a big, bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the highest Democrat on the House’s seapower panel. His Connecticut district includes General Dynamics Electric Boat, which makes the Virginia-class submarines.
Courtney and Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., recently led 131 other House lawmakers in a letter to defense appropriators beseeching them to fund two Virginia-class submarines against the Pentagon’s wishes.
“Preserving a consistent production schedule is crucial for shipyard and industrial base stability, and to fulfill the Navy’s operational requirements,” the lawmakers wrote in a May letter to Calvert and Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the panel’s top Democrat.
Policy riders: Ukraine and Israel
The spending bill also includes several socially conservative policy riders, reminiscent of limits on abortion access for troops and military diversity initiatives, which prompted most Democrats to vote against the bill.
“We’d like to foster a climate in our military that honors and appreciates all Americans who decide to take the oath to serve,” McCollum said on Thursday. “Unfortunately, right now, this bill doesn’t reflect that sentiment.”
McCollum also criticized the laws for omitting $300 million in annual Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding that the defense spending bill has provided annually since FY16.
“Failure to proceed funding that has long been standing bipartisan support for Ukraine, it sends a terrible signal, and it’ll only embolden [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” said McCollum.
Still, $300 million is a small trickle in comparison with the $13.7 billion within the initiative’s funding Congress passed in April as a part of an enormous foreign aid bill, which included a complete $60 billion in economic and security assistance for Ukraine.
The House voted down 308-103 an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to chop off all aid to Ukraine. It also struck down 335-76 one other Greene amendment to scale back Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1 – a provision Republicans adapted last yr before stripping it from the ultimate spending bill after negotiations with the Senate.
The House adopted quite a few other amendments that may invest more cash in various research and development accounts by taking money away from a wide range of operations and maintenance programs.
Lastly, the bill bars the Pentagon from using funds “to withhold, halt, reverse or cancel the delivery of defense articles or defense services” for Israel, and forces the president to transfer withheld weapons to the Israeli military inside 15 days.
Each the Defense and State department spending bills would ban funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees within the Near East, which delivers humanitarian assistance within the Gaza Strip.
The defense spending bill also features a provision that may eliminate the military’s makeshift pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip, which has struggled to deliver an adequate level of humanitarian aid to Palestinians facing famine-like conditions.
Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.