July 19, 2018
FY2019 Defense Appropriations Bill: An Overview of House-
passed H.R. 6157
H.R. 6157, the FY2019 Defense Appropriations Bill passed
by the House on June 28, would provide $667.5 billion to
fund all activities of the Department of Defense (DOD)
except for the construction of military facilities and the
operation of military family housing complexes. This
amounts to $882 million less than the Administration’s
request for this bill, a reduction of slightly more than one-
tenth of 1%. (See Table 1.)
While the total appropriation would be nearly equal to the
request, the House bill would provide more funding than
requested for dozens of programs, with the gross increase
exceeding $10 billion.
Those proposed additions would be offset by hundreds of
proposed reductions to the budget request. The House
Appropriations Committee report to accompany H.R. 6157
(H.Rept. 115-769) characterizes many of these reductions
in terms that imply they would have no anticipated adverse
impact on DOD programs.
In effect, these reductions allowed the House committee to
add billions of dollars to the Administration’s request
without exceeding the cap on defense spending that arose
from the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (P.L. 115-123).
That cap applies to discretionary appropriations for DOD’s
base budget—that is, funding for those activities not
associated with current operations in Afghanistan and Syria,
and other operations which are designated by Congress and
the President as Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).
The House-passed bill would provide a 2.9% increase over
the base budget amount appropriated by the FY2018
defense appropriations act (P.L. 115-141, Division C).
Table 1. FY2019 Defense Appropriations: House-passed H.R. 6157
amounts in billions of dollars of discretionary budget authority (numbers may not sum due to rounding)
Source: Congressional Budget Office, “Estimate of H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019,” July 2, 2018.
Notes: The regular defense appropriations bill for FY2018, initially H.R. 3219, had been enacted as Division C of the FY2019 Omnibus
Appropriations Act, H.R. 1625/P.L. 115-141. An additional $4.5 billion for defense was appropriated as a part of the third FY2018 Continuing
Resolution (H.R. 1370/P.L. 115-96). These funds, designated as “emergency” spending (and, thus, exempt from the BCA-originated cap on
discretionary defense spending), were to accelerate improvements in missile defenses and other activities oriented toward North Korea and to
repair two Pacific Fleet destroyers damaged in collisions. The table does not include two other pools of discretionary budget authority
appropriated for these DOD accounts in FY2018: $434 million to repair hurricane damage, designated as emergency funding, that was
appropriated as part of the fifth Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1892/P.L. 115-123); and $8.1 billion in accrual payments to fund the TRICARE for
Life program of medical insurance for military retirees, funding for which is appropriated automatically, as a matter of permanent law (10 U.S.C.
1111-1117).
