On Thursday’s episode of “Comment from the Capitol,” U.S. Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Saks) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.) discussed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, which passed the House on Wednesday and codifies 15 of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, pending final passage.
Rogers said the bill authorizes more than half of the federal government's discretionary spending and gives the Pentagon direction on how to spend it, namely by expediting acquisitions and adapting to new technologies like drones and artificial intelligence.
“To do anything in this place, as you know, it takes authority and money, and that's the authorization bill and the appropriations bill," Rogers said. "What we have done is we've now given the authority to the Pentagon, which is the largest organization on the planet … and the authorization bill that we passed authorizes over half of all discretionary spending for the federal government each year. But we have now given the authority to the department and direction about what we would like to see them do. Now it's up to the appropriators to look at that author authorization and say, of that, what can we afford?”
The NDAA included over $900 billion in defense spending. But combined with the recent reconciliation package, Rogers said it's actually over $1 trillion for the first time.
“This is the first year our country has gone over a trillion dollars in defense spending," he said. "However, I want to help frame that for people. While that is a large number in itself, as a percentage of GDP, this is the lowest level of defense spending since the year before World War II in 80 years. Our country has really fallen behind other than when Reagan was president, when he decided to rebuild the military, which, by the way, broke the back of the Soviet Union. And then when Bush was president, and we had the surge to win and get out of Iraq. So, we've been meeting with the president. He's really going to lean in next year on trying to get defense spending at a much higher clip.”
Rogers added, “If we do our job right, nobody will mess with us, and we'll stay free and safe… I tell people all the time that the two overriding goals on my committee is to make sure that if we ever get in a fight, it's not a fair fight and we fight it on their homeland, not ours.”
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