PLENTY OF PLUS-UPS: A full-year defense funding deal that became law earlier this month includes nearly $34 billion in increases to Pentagon procurement and research programs, according to a new analysis from budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.
By the numbers: The report tracks instances in which the final defense appropriations bill hikes funding for procurement or R&D accounts beyond the administration’s budget request. The analysis identified 1,090 individual increases — 166 hikes in procurement accounts totaling $20.3 billion and 924 hikes in R&D accounting for $13.7 billion.
Roughly half of the $34 billion in program increases went toward programs where the Pentagon sought no funding in its budget request.
The overall value of program increases also represents a nearly 60 percent boost from 2024, when additions to procurement and R&D accounts totaled just over $21 billion. (The total for program increases was lower in 2025, when the Pentagon was funded by a full-year stopgap for the first time.)
Why it matters: The heightened spending for certain programs shows how lawmakers rearranged spending priorities in considering the Pentagon budget request, including by buying more or different weapons systems and ramping up research efforts.
But Taxpayers for Common Sense likened the increases to “backdoor earmarks” that are implemented with little transparency. The group’s president, Steve Ellis, labeled the tactic “the Wild West of the Pentagon budgeting process.”
“The Pentagon produces thousands of pages of justification books to explain its funding needs,” Ellis said in a statement. “Meanwhile, lawmakers throw money at favored projects with as few as two words of explanation.”
Recommendations: The report recommends that Congress implement transparency measures that identify lawmakers who sponsor program increases. It also calls for it to require those members to propose offsets for the added costs, provide justifications and long-term cost assessments for the increases and list on their websites the recipients of contracts stemming from the spending hikes.
