House committees are beginning work this week on Republicans’ reconciliation package, the massive federal budget bill that would implement key elements of President Donald Trump’s agenda, including extending tax cuts and implementing budget increases and reductions across the federal government.

A major plank of the reconciliation bill is a $150 billion increase in defense spending, part of a push by hawkish Republicans to significantly boost the Pentagon budget in the coming years, which they say has failed to keep pace with China and other U.S. adversaries. The House Armed Services Committee will vote on those provisions on Tuesday. The House is aiming to pass the complete reconciliation package before Memorial Day.

The joint proposal from Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees includes significant investments in fighter jet development and shipbuilding, developing new technologies, restocking munitions supplies, supporting depots and shipyards, enhancing special forces capabilities, modernizing nuclear weapons capabilities and implementing Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense proposal, an anti-missile system inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome.

The proposal also includes funding for Pacific military exercises, Taiwan and border security and provisions for greater fiscal oversight at the Pentagon.

“There is a dangerous and dissonant mismatch between the threats we confront and what we’re spending on national defense,” Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider. “We’re confronting what many believe is … the most dangerous geostrategic environment our country has confronted since 1945.”

Bowman noted that U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP is near its lowest since World War II, despite bipartisan consensus that U.S. defense spending should be boosted.

“I’m really encouraged by some of the reporting that we’re seeing coming out of Capitol Hill, where the defense hawks, for now at least, have won the day versus the isolationists in terms of defense spending,” he said of the joint proposal.

Bowman emphasized that replenishing U.S. munitions stockpiles would help the U.S. continue to provide support to allies facing critical threats, including Israel; to directly counter threats to Israel and to U.S. interests; and boost supplies of air defense interceptors. He added that expanding American shipbuilding will enable the U.S. to continue to project power both in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.

Bowman said that many of the cutting-edge defense programs the U.S. is developing are developed in cooperation with Israel, and can help benefit both Israel and U.S. capabilities worldwide.

He added that the administration’s missile defense proposal would include elements that would help better protect U.S. troops forward-deployed in the Middle East, who have come under fire from U.S. adversaries, in addition to the U.S. homeland.

Democrats are likely to oppose the legislation, citing concerns about cuts elsewhere. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that there is bipartisan support for investing in defense spending, but that such changes should be considered through normal processes. He argued the funding would come at the expense of critical assistance programs and alongside tax cuts for the wealthy.

“I am ready and remain committed to working with my colleagues across the aisle to pass a responsible budget that meets our defense needs,” Smith said. “We can and should do this without requiring the most vulnerable among us to carry the burden of the costs on their backs.”  

Meanwhile, Agudath Israel of America has been advocating for lawmakers to include the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) in the package, which would create a new $10 billion annual tax credit program for people donating to scholarship funds. Similar programs are in place in 22 states around the nation. The Republican Jewish Coalition also supports the legislation, as do a range of faith and school choice advocates.

Rabbi A.D. Motzen, the national director of government affairs at Agudath Israel, said that the legislation would allow donors to scholarship funds, which are distributed to eligible students, to receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits.

“What that means is that a family who wants to attend a Jewish day school could apply to scholarship organizations that are now funded with all these donations to the tune of $10 billion a year, and then receive a scholarship,” Motzen explained. “It will generate more businesses and more individuals to invest in education.”

He said the scholarships can be used for a range of purposes, including private parochial schools, homeschooling expenses, tutoring and special needs services. “Everybody can potentially benefit and it has a tremendous amount of support,” Motzen said. Unlike school voucher programs, the program does not include direct funding from a state to schools and is not limited to full-time schooling.

Agudath Israel brought 200 advocates to the Hill prior to the April recess to push for the ECCA. Motzen noted that the legislation, introduced as a stand-alone bill in the previous Congress, had support from lawmakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Vice President JD Vance, then a senator.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is the lead Senate sponsor of the stand-alone ECCA, and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), who chairs the House Education Committee, is an original cosponsor. As a tax credit provision, the legislation will fall within the purview of the House Ways & Means Committee.

Agudath Israel has run scholarship programs under comparable state-level programs and Motzen said they have been a “game-changer,” allowing parents who otherwise could not afford to send their children to a different school to do so. Jewish federations in Pennsylvania have also run a scholarship program benefitting “every single type of school,” Motzen noted.

House Republicans are widely expected to pursue significant cuts to Medicaid and other federal assistance programs in search of government cost savings — though moderate Republicans have said they would oppose such cuts. The Jewish Federations of North America is focusing its advocacy efforts on protecting those programs.

“We agree strongly with President Trump’s promise to protect Medicaid benefits, which are critical supporting our community’s older adults and Holocaust survivors and people with disabilities,” David Goldfarb, the senior director of JFNA’s Strategic Health Center, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, as the recent budget compromise shows, there is enormous pressure to get a deal to extend the expiring tax cuts done with Medicaid and programs that address food insecurity still at risk of hundreds of billions in harmful cuts.”

JFNA works with a network of Jewish social services agencies across the country, many of which benefit from federal assistance. JFNA led a delegation of leaders to Capitol Hill in early April to advocate for protecting those aid programs.