But in a maneuver intended to skirt the military spending caps, the legislation includes roughly $39 billion in an Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which is reserved for emergency military operations and exempt from sequestration.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, said that he did not mind the increases in military spending, but that Congress needs “to be taking care of domestic things, too.”

Image Elijah E. Cummings. Credit Brett Carlsen/Associated Press

“There’s too many things we need to deal with — the things that help people who aspire to get into the middle class and stay in the middle class,” Mr. Cummings said. “My concerns are more those kinds of issues, you know, some kind of balance here. I believe in a strong military, but I also believe that we need to have a strong country.”

In a letter to her colleagues Thursday evening, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, urged her party’s lawmakers to vote against the military spending bill.

“The Republican defense authorization bill before the House is both bad budgeting and harmful to military planning — perpetuating uncertainty and instability in the defense budget, and damaging the military’s ability to plan and prepare for the future,” Ms. Pelosi wrote. “Republicans should come together with Democrats in a fiscally responsible way to protect our national security and grow our economy.”