The House has approved a $612 billion annual military-spending bill in defiance of a veto threat from President Barack Obama.

In a 269-151 vote on Friday, Republicans overwhelmingly passed the bill which Democrats believe would break budget limits on military spending.

"Whatever our troops need to get the job done, they should get it, and the House has acted to provide just that," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "With all the threats our troops face and the sacrifices they make, Democrats' opposition to this defense bill is in fact indefensible."

Democrats argue that Republican circumvented the across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that began in 2013. They assert that any increase in military spending is unacceptable unless budgets for other programs increase as well.

�This desperate attempt to get around the budget caps put in place by Congress will have a significant negative effect on our military,� said Representative Adam Smith of Washington state, top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Congress has to take �care of domestic things, too" in order to create a �balance�.

"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," Cummings said.

According to the new legislation, $89 billion would be allocated to Overseas Contingency Operations, a sum which is reserved for emergency military operations and exempt from sequestration.

The White House has opposed several provisions in the bill, including one that would make it more difficult for Obama to close US detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Four years ago, Congress limited the spending of the Pentagon triggering massive spending cuts across every major aspect of America�s military known as the sequester.

In recent years, the US military has come under scrutiny by the public for mishandling trillions of US taxpayer dollars and in some cases that money is never accounted for.

An investigation last year revealed that the US Department of Defense had failed to account for $8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer money that Congress had allocated toward the Pentagon since 1996.

By Press TV