House lawmakers rejected efforts to examine options for reducing DoD civilian workforce and pushed back against an anti-union measure.
Anastasia Obis
July 23, 2026 7:08 pm
4 min read
The House narrowly passed its version of the fiscal 2027 defense policy bill on Wednesday evening despite strong Democratic opposition over the bill’s massive price tag, the war with Iran and a provision that would expand military partnership between the United States and Israel.
While the $1.15 trillion defense bill backs President Donald Trump’s request to raise all service members’ pay by 5 to 7%, it does not mention a pay raise for DoD civilians in fiscal 2027. While civilian pay is addressed outside the annual defense authorization process, some Democrats argued that House lawmakers missed an opportunity to provide a pay increase for the department’s civilian workforce.
“Hardworking civilian federal employees at the Defense Department are no less deserving of an annual raise than their compatriots in uniform. Oftentimes, civilian and military personnel work side by side doing similar work at the Pentagon and on bases across the world, yet this National Defense Authorization Act gives military personnel as much as a 7% raise while leaving civilian employees behind,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement.
“That disparity is wrong, and it’s why I did not support this bill, which balloons the defense budget by over 28% and will cost more than a trillion dollars but cannot find enough funds to ensure parity in raises between civilian and military personnel. The Trump Administration should be ashamed of itself for proposing this pay disparity, and I urge the Senate to address it and insist on parity,” he added.
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The Senate Armed Services Committee similarly remained silent on a pay raise for DoD civilians. Unlike the House bill, however, it rejected the Trump administration’s proposed tiered military pay raise in favor of a 3.6% across-the-board increase for all service members. Senate Democrats blocked the must-pass bill from advancing to the floor in June over the same issues that drew opposition from most House Democrats.
The House, however, rejected an amendment offered by Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), requiring the Pentagon to examine options for reducing its civilian workforce by 200,000 employees.
“I have kind of looked into this… I have found shocking anecdotes of people working in the private sector, in big companies who manage to get by doing very little work because the companies are just plain too big, and people fall between the cracks. If that’s going on in private sector big companies, think how much more likely that’s happening in a big organization like the Department of War,” Grothman said during House floor remarks on Wednesday.
“I think it’d be a good exercise for the Department of War to say, ‘We’ve got at least 705,000 people. What would happen if we had to get rid of 200,000?’ Maybe we’ll find they’re all necessary, but I don’t think so… I’m kind of shocked that we have a lot of people who don’t want auditors poking around the Department of War and seeing what they’ll find out,” he added.
The amendment was defeated in a 254-175 vote, with 43 Republicans joining Democrats to oppose it.
The House also did not offer an amendment introduced by Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) that sought to strike a provision prohibiting the Defense Department from using fiscal 2027 funds to implement Trump’s executive order that removed collective bargaining rights for civilian workers.
A bipartisan coalition added that provision during the House Armed Services Committee’s markup earlier this summer. While the SASC’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act includes similar language, last year’s provision to protect collective bargaining rights for DoD civilians was ultimately stripped from the final version of the 2026 defense policy bill.
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The legislation also seeks to bar the Defense Department from using fiscal 2027 funds to terminate employees in military child development programs as well as the Department of Defense Education Activity and Defense Health Agency workers.
Similarly, the legislation would prohibit the use of 2027 funds to implement a hiring freeze for a range of civilian roles, including civilian mariners, military medical personnel, childcare workers and employees at depots, shipyards and arsenals. Many of these positions are already exempt under current DoD policy.
The House bill is now headed to the Senate.
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