Administration budget maneuvers could affect Army barracks, family housing projects

The Army’s $252.8 billion fiscal 2027 budget proposal contains more than $8.4 billion for barracks improvements and construction, but the plan, which would quadruple the service’s spending for unaccompanied housing, faces an uphill battle in Congress.

The service’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes $2.9 billion in discretionary funds — the portion of the budget that supports programs, procurement and other expenses — and $5.8 billion in a special apportion for barracks that would pass under a separate bill, known as reconciliation.

Army Budget Director Major Gen. Rebecca McElwain said Thursday the budget would enable the Army to balance current readiness and “future dominance,” furnishing equipment, training, security and quality of life for those now serving while also investing in the future.

That includes fixing and building new barracks “faster and less expensively,” McElwain said during a forum on the Army’s budget plan at the Association of the United States Army on Thursday in Arlington, Virginia.

The reconciliation funding would help with that effort, McElwain said.

“You’re going to see this over and over, but barracks is a very centrally focused area,” McElwain said.

The Army has struggled for years with its aging infrastructure, and following media reports in 2023 of poor living conditions like mold, inoperable heating systems, vermin, pests and other problems in unaccompanied housing, the service inspected more than 6,700 barracks worldwide, finding that roughly a quarter were in “poor” or “failing” condition.

As a result, Army leaders dramatically increased the budget to repair or replace dilapidated facilities beginning in 2025 with a $2.35 billion request.

The $2.9 billion request in the fiscal 2027 discretionary budget request is an increase of $538 million from fiscal 2026, but McElwain said the extra money in reconciliation would accelerate the improvements.

“We’re still obviously going to work really hard to get those barracks done, but the additive reconciliation will get us there faster,” McElwain said.

The funds would not only improve living conditions for currently serving troops, but prepare the service for a planned increase of 18,300 soldiers next year, she said.

“We’ve got to accelerate being able to have the capacity, because we’re growing our Army,” McElwain said. “Where are we going to put them? Are we really going to put all these privates out in the economy? I don’t think so.”

Roughly $350 billion of the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 budget request for the Department of Defense falls under reconciliation funding. The proposal is controversial because a reconciliation bill — separate from the defense appropriations bill — could be passed only with Republican votes, provided nearly all GOP House and Senate members support it.

The partisan move would sidestep the traditional congressional funding process.

In a statement accompanying the proposed fiscal 2027 defense budget, White House officials said the strategy was justified because in the past, “Democrats have demanded and received corresponding increases in wasteful and harmful programs for every increase in the Defense Budget.”

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pushed back. During an Army budget hearing Tuesday, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chided the service for including important line items, like certain munitions, in the reconciliation account.

“The reliance of this budget request on one-time reconciliation spending is really quite a risky approach, and the Army’s budget illustrates the risk pretty clearly,” McConnell said.

In April, Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee called the Pentagon’s proposed budget “outrageous and unacceptable.”

“The Pentagon does not have a funding problem. It has a problem with efficiently spending the funding that Congress has provided them — and accounting for it,” McCollum said, adding that the Defense Department had not passed any recent audits.

The Army’s budget proposal includes $1.57 billion for family housing improvements: $708 million in discretionary funding and $861 million in reconciliation. According to Army budget documents, the reconciliation budget would be used to build 30 homes on Kwajalein Atoll, construction at Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall, Virginia, and completion of units in Vicenza, Italy.

Addressing the AUSA audience, which included defense industry workers, U.S. and foreign military officers and congressional staff, McElwain urged lawmakers to consider the added funding but also approve any appropriations by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

“Please, give us our discretionary funds,” McElwain said. “We realize that the supplemental is something that may not get, may not get reconciliation … [but] we have all these incredible things that we’re trying to do and move forward.”