House Passes FY2025 Defense Appropriations Bill on Largely Partisan Lines

The House passed the FY2025 Defense Appropriations bill today on largely partisan lines, primarily because of social policy provisions that were included. The bill cuts almost $1 billion from the $29.6 billion requested by the Biden Administration for the U.S. Space Force as the House continues to prioritize reductions in federal spending.

The bill, H.R. 8774, passed by a vote of 217-198. Only five Democrats voted in favor of the bill and one Republican voted against. The heavily partisan split may spell trouble when it reaches the Senate.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), chair of the full committee, praised the bill, which provides $833 billion, a one percent increase over FY2024 in line with the caps set by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.  Calvert said the bill deters “China’s aggression with strategic investments in the Pacific, promoting innovation and modernization, optimizing the Pentagon’s civilian workforce, increasing the Department’s role in countering the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., and supporting our close ally, Israel.”

Their Democratic counterparts, subcommittee Ranking Member Betty McCollum (D-MN) and full committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), see it quite differently. They said it “weakens national security and undermines democracy at home and aboard” by eliminating support for Ukraine, allowing disinformation campaigns and extremist views to flourish, failing to invest in climate change programs necessary to protect military installations, and harms readiness “with divisive provisions that undermine morale and fail to support our service personnel.” The latter include limiting women’s access to abortion, cutting vital civilian positions, “attacking the LGBTQ+ community with hateful policies, and banning funding for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.”

Those are the key points of contention in the bill, not space activities, although it does cut some space programs and prohibits transferring any National Guard units to the Space Force.

The House Appropriations Committee reported the bill on June 13. According to the figures in the report, which are somewhat different from what the Pentagon announced when the budget was released in March, the Administration requested $29.6 billion for the Space Force. The House approved about $900 million less — $28.7 billion.

The Space Force was created in December 2019 pursuant to the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act as the sixth military service, separating it from the U.S. Air Force. The Space Force and the Air Force comprise the Department of the Air Force (DAF). The first full Space Force budget request was for FY2021, $15.4 billion, basically a reshuffling of funds as the Space Force budget was separated from the Air Force’s.

In FY2022, the request was $17.4 billion and Congress appropriated $18 billion. For FY2023, the request was $24.5 billion and Congress appropriated $26.3 billion. For FY2024, the request was $30 billion and for the first time Congress appropriated less, $28.9 billion, although it was still a significant increase ($2.5 billion) over FY2023.

The FY2025 House-passed bill would cut the Space Force not only from the $29.6 billion request, but from what it received in FY2024. The new total is about $200 million less than FY2024 and with no adjustment for inflation the purchasing power of that money is further reduced.

Among the biggest changes is a $185.9 million reduction from the $647.2 million request for procurement of GPS III Follow-On satellites, directing that one satellite be eliminated as DOD looks at ways to ensure resiliency. Other significant procurement cuts are $50 million from the $658 million for “Special Space Activities,” a classified program, and $63 million from the $1.847 billion requested for National Security Space Launch (NSSL). The committee expresses support for the new dual-track NSSL procurement approach and explains the cut as “NSSL program savings.”

Many changes are made in the Research, Development, Test and Engineering (RDT&E) account as usual and quite a few are transfers of funds from one line item to another at DOD’s request as accounts are realigned.

Among the larger cuts are those to Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking. The committee’s report highlights that it provided $2.4 billion, but that is a cut of about $150 million. The Medium Earth Orbit system under development at Space Systems Command was cut $95.9 million from the $846.4 million request due to “MEO vendor termination, Epoch 2 ops and integration early to need, and management services excess to need.” For the Space Development Agency’s Low Earth Orbit system, $54.5 million was cut from the $1.73 billion request due to “ground management and integration cost overestimation, and management reserve reduction.”

The committee expressed concern about the Space Force’s new Resilient GPS (R-GPS) initiative to launch about 20 small satellites transmitting core GPS signals to make GPS more resilient. After the FY2025 budget was submitted, DOD requested permission to reallocate $77 million to R-GPS on top of $44 million reallocated in FY2024 pursuant to a new “quick start” authority provided in the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The committee said it didn’t see how a proliferated constellation would help with the primary threat to GPS, jamming, compared to other efforts being pursued elsewhere in DOD, nor solve another major GPS problem, the lack of M-code GPS user equipment, which it called “a critical link to enabling jam-resistant capabilities.” The committee complained DOD “chose to bypass its own budget process and dodge the congressional appropriations process” by making the request and directed DOD’s Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, to submit a report on whether R-GPS is the best alternative to ensure resiliency.

In its report, the committee also expressed support for Space Force’s utilization of commercial data for space domain awareness data and commercial imagery, and encouraged investments in “extended duration launch vehicle capabilities” like high-energy upper stages that could “enable orbit transfer advantages, unlock extended duration missions both in earth orbit and cislunar space, and enable new concepts of operations to protect against in-space threats, as space transitions from a strategic to a tactical domain.”