Defense Appropriations Highlights and Conference Issues

Key Points

• The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have both produced fiscal year 2024 defense bills, and while the Senate measure is bipartisan, the House bill is not.
• The Senate appropriations bill adds more money for defense-wide and Navy programs, while the House bill adds more funding for the Army and Air Force.
• Key conference issues, on top of wide discrepancies in funding priorities, include innovation and the agility of budget processes to support military competitiveness, industrial base and workforce initiatives, multiyear contracting, a large pay raise for enlisted personnel provided by the House, and the Senate’s inclusion of $8 billion above budget caps for emergency spending.

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The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have produced fiscal year (FY) 2024 defense spending bills.¹ Time for floor debate in both chambers has been scarce and will likely remain so in September, so these measures may proceed directly into conference negotiations, as has been the case in recent years. Similar to the authorization measures, the Senate defense appropriations bill was actioned on a bipartisan basis with a committee vote of 27–1, while the House bill was approved by committee on a partisan vote of 34–24.²

The most contentious issues for conference are likely to be those that do not directly relate to military  capability. This report does not focus on those issues but instead summarizes the Senate bill and highlights key commonalities and differences to be resolved with the House in the coming weeks.³

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Notes

1. Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2024, S. 2587, 118th Cong., 1st sess. (2023); and Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2024, H.R. 4365, 118th Cong., 1st sess. (2023).
2. House Committee on Appropriations, “Committee Approves FY24 Defense Bill,” press release, June 22, 2023, https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/committee-approves-fy24-defense-bill; and Senate Committee on Appropriations, “Senate Committee Approves FY24 Defense Appropriations Bill,” press release, July 27, 2023, https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/minority/senate-committee-approves-fy24-sac-d-appropriations-bill.
3. Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, 2024, S. Rept. 118-81, 118th Cong., 1st sess., July 27, 2023, https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy24_defense_report.pdf; Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, 2024, H. Rept. 118-121, 118th Cong., 1st sess., June 27, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/118/crpt/hrpt121/CRPT-118hrpt121.pdf; Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024, H.R. 4366, 118th Cong., 1st sess. (2023); Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 2024, S. Rept. 118-43, 118th Cong., 1st sess., June 22, 2023, https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy24_milcon-va_reportpdf.pdf; and US Department of Defense, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), “DoD Budget Request,” https://comptroller.defense.gov/Budget-Materials.