US congress capitol building

The United States Capitol is seen on Capitol Hill on August 6, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)

REAGAN NATIONAL DEFENSE FORUM — The National Défense Authorization Bill will be released on Monday, and key members of Congress are convinced it will be able to pass for the 62nd year in a row, according to Rep. Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Committee.

“The Lord as my witness” the bill will come Monday, Smith said during the opening panel of the Reagan Défense Forum on Saturday, despite stated opposition from some Republicans over vaccine mandates for members of the military. Smith’s comments were met with applause from the pro-defense crowd, which was repeated when he added that Congress “will vote and will pass it this week — one way or the other.”

It is expected that House and Senate lawmakers have settled on an $858 billion topline for defense spending, $45 billion higher than the White House originally requested. The topline figure, first reported by POLITICO, reflects the increased spending proposed by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in their respective drafts of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

The final bill is expected to receive a vote by both chambers this month and, if passed, will head to President Joe Biden’s desk for a signature.

Assuming the policy bill is summarily passed into law, a much more difficult political fight is expected for the defense spending bill. The House Appropriations Committee proposed a $762 billion topline while the corresponding Senate Committee recommended $850 billion. (The NDAA effectively “authorizes” the Pentagon to spend government monies, while the appropriations committees control how much cash a government agency receives from the US Treasury.)

Speaking later during the Reagan forum, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., also showed support for moving the NDAA forward, saying he was “heartened to hear everyone say that we need to pass” the authorization bill.

“There had been some school of thought that the new speaker would like to tinker with that after the first of the year,” said Wicker, who is expected to become the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress. “I think most of us agree, we need to get our work done for this year and get that done. And of course, we need to pass the [FY24] NDAA really before the end of summer next year.”

More broadly, Wicker threw his support behind getting an omnibus funding bill passed before the current Congress expires, citing numbers his staff assembled that operating under a continuing resolution for a full year would account to an “$80 billion hit to national defense” that would represent “an utter disaster” and send the wrong signals to Russia and China.

“There’s such a small majority in the House of Representatives. There’s a small Republican majority coming next year. I really think it would be very, very difficult for Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy to get an omnibus bill done after the first of the year. So it’s incumbent on us if we support national defense and if we back the public in hoping that we can avoid a war with China and help our Ukrainian friends we need to pass an omnibus bill.”

Valerie Insinna in Simi Valley, Calif. contributed to this report.