WASHINGTON — The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday cleared three bills that would speed up the process for countries seeking to buy US weaponry, but voted down one measure that would have loosened restrictions on Foreign Military Financing (FMF) dollars.
That bill — which would have allowed any country to use FMF to buy US weaponry through direct commercial sales — was taken down in a 23-23 vote after two Republicans, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry and Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, sided with the Democrats.
FMF funding are dollars which are given out as grants to foreign countries, with the stipulation the money can only be spent on US-made weapons. The dollars are allocated as part of the annual budget process. For fiscal 2027, the State Department is requesting $5.25 billion in FMF funding.
Allowing FMF money to fund sales through the commercial process, instead of the more stringent Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process overseen by the State Department, would allow key partners like Ukraine and Taiwan to buy US equipment faster, said the bill’s sponsor Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash.
During the debate, neither Perry nor Burchett indicated their forthcoming opposition to the bill, making its failure a bit of a surprise. Democrats, however, seized on the language to raise questions questions about the Trump family’s involvement in the world of defense startups.
New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the committee’s ranking Democrat, argued that without the State Department’s oversight of the FMS program, FMF dollars would become vulnerable to corruption. The changes proposed by the bill, he added, could ultimately serve to financially benefit Trump’s two eldest sons, who have invested in defense startup Powerus.
Meeks put forward a substitute bill that would require the State Department to submit a detailed strategy for reviewing direct commercial sales made with FMF to identify bribery, slush funds or other instances of corruption. It also requires the department to provide a detailed plan to ensure no sales are made by firms owned or controlled by the Trump family or US government officials.
“The Trump administration has already shown us …how irresponsible it is with US taxpayer dollars, and we should not enable the executive branch to spend potentially billions of more dollars without adequate plan for implementation and accountability in place first,” he said.
Meanwhile Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Md., offered an amendment to the Baumgartner bill that would ensure that FMF money does not finance any direct commercial sale that would financially benefit a family member of the president or vice president.
“To be clear, I support American investment in drone defense and interceptors. I support more secure supply chains,” Olszewski said. “Here’s what I refuse to support: Steering these contracts and investments the President’s sons over other American suppliers. When the president’s family stands to profit, it casts a doubt of suspicion over every Pentagon contract.”
Both Meeks’ and Olszewski’s measures were defeated by Republicans, before the Baumgartner bill ultimately tanked in a tied vote.
Although that bill did not survive committee, three other bills meant to speed up weapons exports were approved by HFAC members. House leaders are prepared to give floor time for those bills to be considered on June 8, HFAC chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said at the close of the markup.
RELATED: Forthcoming US arms sales changes leave unanswered questions
One of the successful bills was the PORCUPINE Act, which streamlines the arms sale process to Taiwan and was passed by the Senate last year.
Mast offered the PORCUPINE Act as a substitute for Perry’s Taiwan PLUS Act, which was also debated by the committee. Both bills essentially elevate Taiwan’s status on arms exports to partners like Australia, Israel and Japan, shortening the congressional notification and review period to 15 days while raising the monetary threshold that triggers those reviews.
However, Meeks contended that the PORCUPINE Act would go too far because it amends the Arms Export Control Act to include Taiwan among the US’s closest allies — something that the Taiwan PLUS Act doesn’t do, despite giving Taiwan the same benefits.
“By amending the Arms Export Control Act to list Taiwan among our list of closest allies, what it really does is, it just sends a signal that is contrary to our one China policy,” Meeks said. “The fastest way to trigger a PRC invasion of Taiwan, in my estimation, is to unilaterally stretch longstanding US policy that actually has kept Taiwan safe for over four decades. So I don’t want to cross that line.”
Perry added that the PORCUPINE Act “takes us in the wrong direction,” without providing specifics.
After HFAC members voted to replace the Taiwan PLUS act with the PORCUPINE Act in a 31-14 vote, Meeks and Perry joined other members to push the PORCUPINE Act forward in a 45-0 vote.
The movement on the PORCUPINE Act comes as President Donald Trump and a cadre of senior administration officials are in China for much-publicized meetings with the government in Beijing, where it is anticipated the question of arms for Taiwan will be raised.
The second arms export bill passed by the committee would formally authorize the State Department’s FMF loan and loan guarantee program. If passed by Congress, the bill would give the department more latitude to bestow FMF funds through loans and loan guarantees rather than through grants, which is traditionally how FMF money is administered.
A FMF loan process was used several times during the Biden administration, including for both Poland and Romania. Unlike traditional FMF dollars, these State-authorized loans came with interest that will have to be paid back to the US government. In its FY27 request, State is seeking “authority to provide up to $16 billion in FMF loans and $2 billion in FMF loan guarantees to maximize the Administration’s ability to offer more competitive financing options relative to strategic competitors.”
Finally, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cleared a bill requiring the State Department to develop a strategy for involving more countries in multinational agreements to procure US weapons through the FMS and direct commercial sales processes. That measure was offered by Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who previously chaired the committee’s Foreign Arms Sales Task Force.
Those changes would allow “smaller countries that don’t necessarily have the resources to participate in large scale FMS cases” to band together with other nations to purchase weapons from the United States through the State Department’s Lead-Nation Procurement initiative, a senior GOP committee staff member told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, the Trump issued an executive order, which called for US industrial interests to be prioritized when considering arms sales and for the nation to cut bureaucratic red tape that makes it difficult for foreign nations to buy American weaponry.
