House Passes First Funding Bill, with Military, Veterans Money

House Republicans passed the first of 12 annual bills to fund the government beyond Sept. 30, with funds for military construction and veterans’ programs, though the rest of the bills have been difficult to advance.

The House passed its fiscal 2026 Military Construction-VA appropriations bill in a 218-206 vote Wednesday. The vote represents an early victory for House Republican leaders, who aim to shepherd their spending bills through a narrow majority. But they’ve hit snags with other, more controversial measures, and have only set top-line allocations for five of the 12 bills.

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Republicans still haven’t settled on top-line spending levels for defense and nondefense funding, let alone allocations for each of the 12 bills. He said Republicans will keep releasing spending levels in a piecemeal fashion, aiming to make gradual progress.

“We’re sort of releasing them one at a time,” Cole told reporters Wednesday. “I hate to have to release them that way, but it may get down to that. We don’t want to stop — we want to keep moving.”

Cole warned that his goal of reporting all 12 bills out of his committee before the August recess is “aspirational,” and said GOP leaders are juggling other priorities, including their major tax-and-spending package and briefing members on the Israel-Iran conflict. He said a continuing resolution to keep the government running past the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline wouldn’t be the worst-case scenario.

“If we have to go to a CR, we certainly will,” Cole said. “It beats a government shutdown.”

The Military Construction-VA bill includes $152.1 billion in funds, about a $5 billion increase over the current level, according to a GOP committee summary. The Veterans Affairs funds are weighted toward a program that supports veterans’ health care at non-VA facilities, prompting complaints from Democrats who said the measure is a step toward privatization.

Cole touted the bill’s funding for veterans’ health programs and military infrastructure, saying on the House floor the bill puts “our veterans, military families, base readiness, and America first.”

Democrats criticized the bill for focusing nearly all the veterans’ health program funding increases on the VA’s Community Care program, which provides money for non-VA facilities. Nearly three-quarters of the bill’s overall increase for veterans’ medical programs would go to Community Care, according to a committee report that accompanied the legislation.

House appropriators struck a compromise during a June markup on funding for the Toxic Exposures Fund, which supports health care for veterans exposed to toxic materials during their service. The bill initially provided funding for fiscal 2026 but didn’t include any advance funding for later years. Democrats criticized that approach, saying it undermines certainty. Republicans agreed to provide advance funding for fiscal 2027, but required that it only be available for up to two years, rather than being available indefinitely until it’s expended.

House members adopted an amendment to transfer $4.1 million from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — out of a $293.4 million pot of money for the group — and give it to the Air Force to increase security at bases receiving B-21 bomber aircraft.

They also added a measure clarifying that restrictions on “gender affirming care” apply to “any social, psychological, behavioral, or medical intervention designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender assigned to the individual at birth.”

Members also adopted by voice vote a batch of non-controversial amendments, including a measure to provide an additional $2 million for prosthetic research and a provision to set aside $1 million to use artificial intelligence to improve data sharing for veterans’ electronic health records.