The Defense Department’s fiscal 2019 budget is a step closer to President Donald Trump’s desk, after the Senate on Tuesday voted 93-7 in favor of an appropriations bill that funds the Pentagon for the full year and keeps other federal agencies going through Dec. 7.
The final DOD appropriations bill still must be approved by the House, which is in recess until Sept. 25, before Trump can sign the measure into law. The 2018 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. The House is now scheduled to meet four times before then.
The White House requested about $2 billion more for fiscal 2019 than the roughly $675 billion compromise DOD budget would appropriate. However, the final bill would provide roughly $20 billion more than the 2018 budget.
Among other things, the DOD appropriation would boost military procurement by about $135 billion in 2019: about 1 percent more than the 2018 budget and nearly $5 billion more than requested.
The bill, H.R. 6157, would if signed nearly double year-over-year development spending for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to the House-recommended level of nearly $415 million: 20 percent more than what the administration requested. The new missile will replace legacy Minuteman III missiles, which were made by Boeing and are mostly armed with W78 nuclear warheads.
The Long-Range Standoff weapon, a next-generation nuclear cruise missile that like GBSD is in a competitive development phase, would get about $665 million for fiscal 2019: about 50 percent more than in 2018 and some 8 percent more than requested. The missile would be tipped by W80 nuclear warheads.
Trump had not issued a statement of administration policy — an official note about whether he will sign or veto the bill — at deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The 2019 DOD appropriation is part of a multi-agency appropriations package that also funds the civilian departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. The bill also includes a temporary appropriation extending the 2018 budgets of other federal agencies through Dec. 7. The Department of Energy is not among these; the civilian nuclear-weapon steward would get a full-year 2019 appropriation, under a multi-agency funding bill Congress sent to Trump’s desk last week.
