Congress oversees the defense budget primarily through two yearly bills: the defense authorization and defense appropriations bills. Table 2 and Table 4 present the Department of Defense (DOD) authorization and appropriations bills from 1970 to 2018. Data in Table 1 and Table 3 are mostly from the Congressional Quarterly Almanac . Ideally, after the authorization bill is passed, the appropriations bill goes through this same process. Although conceptually a sequential process, authorization and appropriations bills can be considered at the same time or even passed in reverse order. For instance, the Senate can report out a bill, and then substitute the text of the Senate bill for the text of the bill passed by the House while retaining the House bill number. The House can also use this procedure. For more information on the components of a CR and the defense budget, see CRS Report R42647, Continuing Resolutions: Overview of Components and Recent Practices , by James V. Saturno and Jessica Tollestrup. Methods of Voting

There are several types of votes: voice votes, teller votes, division votes, and unanimous consent votes, but only when there is a recorded vote will there be a vote number and vote tally in the Congressional Record .
The passage of the Department of Defense (DOD) authorization and appropriations bills through Congress often does not follow the course laid out in textbooks on legislative procedure. Tracking DOD authorization or appropriation bills can be confusing and time-consuming. This has been particularly true in recent years, when continuing resolutions (CRs) containing the DOD and other appropriation bills have been enacted in lieu of the 12 regular appropriations bills for the entire U.S. government.
This report is a research aid that lists the DOD authorization bills (Table 1 and Table 2) and appropriations bills (Table 3 and Table 4) for FY1961-FY2019. This report includes all the pertinent information on the passage of these bills through the legislative process: bill numbers, report numbers, dates reported and passed, recorded vote numbers and vote tallies, dates of passage of the conference reports with their numbers and votes, vetoes, substitutions, dates of final passage, and public law numbers. Significant definitions are also included. This report will be updated as legislative activity warrants.
For information on current defense authorization and appropriations, see the CRS Appropriations Status Table: FY2019.