WASHINGTON -- In just the past four fiscal years, Congress appropriated, with virtually no public debate, in excess of $100 billion more than any president sought for more than 2,000 weapons programs, according to a government watchdog group’s database and recent Pentagon reports.

And there is more on the way this year.

House and Senate Defense appropriators from both parties have proposed allocating, between their two fiscal 2026 spending bills, $52.2 billion for 1,403 “program increases” to the Pentagon’s weapons budget request, according to a previously unreleased database from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that monitors government spending. That’s more than double the amount that was being proposed for such additions in the two bills combined at this stage of the process just two years ago.

Some of the proposed spending infusions pending this year may be jettisoned when lawmakers reconcile the two spending bills. But if only half of the $52.2 billion survives into law, the amount of money involved, while a fraction of the Pentagon budget, would still surpass the current funding of the Commerce, Interior or Treasury departments. And the $52.2 billion pending for fiscal 2026 would come on top of the $156.2 billion in additional defense spending appropriated this summer via reconciliation.

The Taxpayers for Common Sense database^[1] and analysis^[2] is the latest in an annual series of reports by the group that CQ Roll Call has analyzed and reported on.

That Congress adds defense dollars for programs that benefit constituents is hardly new. But the scale and expense of the phenomenon, which occurs mostly out of public view at the direction of anonymous lawmakers, is not well-known. And what the military is getting for these expenditures has not been demonstrated.

“Some of these increases may be worthy investments, but without justification requirements, how are we to know?” Gabe Murphy, policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said in an interview. “When lawmakers are allowed to anonymously direct funds to companies that contribute to their campaigns or that they hold stock in, abuse is inevitable. The solution is transparency.”

Following the Money

The $52.2 billion in weapons program increases under consideration in fiscal 2026 comprises the House bill’s proposed $19 billion for 779 different projects and the Senate measure’s proposed $33.2 billion for 624 initiatives.

For some of the items at issue, the proposed funding increase would boost spending for a program proposed by the Pentagon. But this year, as usual, most of the items, 75% in the fiscal 2026 proposals, weren’t requested at all.

In fact, with a handful of exceptions, 3% of the fiscal 2026 proposals, these programs aren’t even on the armed services’ annual lists of “unfunded priorities” that didn’t make the budget.

Rather, these funding hikes are driven by lawmakers, though for the most part the sponsors’ identities are not known. While members of Congress who sponsor earmarks for nonprofits and government entities must be listed in a table in reports accompanying spending bills, no such requirement for disclosure exists for the far costlier “program increases.”

The overwhelming majority of the programs that benefit from program increases are never discussed in open hearings or other public forums. Instead, they are merely inserted by the hundreds each year in tables accompanying spending bills.

The vast majority of these spending boosts are for mostly obscure military research and procurement programs -- not, for the most part, for high-profile jets, ships or combat vehicles. The boosts typically cost $30 million or less apiece in any given year’s bill.

Moreover, to the degree the topline spending allowed in the Defense bills is not sufficiently increased in any given year to accommodate these member priorities, appropriators must allocate less than the military sought for other programs.

The House added 274 program increases to its fiscal 2026 bill via floor amendments this year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Each addition was offset by a subtraction to a Pentagon request for some other program.

Both chambers’ defense spending bills proposed billions of dollars less than the administration requested for operations and maintenance spending, even though the Defense Department had a backlog of $271 billion in deferred facilities maintenance and repair in 2024, according to an April 2025 study conducted by the Government Accountability Office. That proposed reduction in operations and maintenance spending in the fiscal 2026 Defense bills has enabled appropriators to recommend spending more on program increases, even though the bills, unlike floor amendments, do not identify one-to-one offsets.

Parochial Projects

Congress has a duty to shape, not just accept, a president’s budget request. And proponents of the surge in weapons program spending say it provides a way for small companies with promising technologies to see work flourish that might otherwise be neglected -- although sometimes the additions, particularly the costlier ones, go to the larger companies.

Often the money boosts are proposed by members of Congress who have a parochial interest in the factory that stands to get the contract. These politicians’ campaign political action committees in many cases receive contributions from the companies that benefit from the additional spending.

The typical program increase is listed in a funding table with only a few words of description, and its congressional author remains unmentioned. These line items include systems or technologies that perhaps only one company makes.

Three years ago, then- Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jon Tester, D- Mont., issued a press release celebrating how the fiscal 2022 Defense spending bill “delivers” for Montana and is “making targeted investments” in the state.

He listed a half-dozen Montana businesses that would benefit -- even though the competitions had yet to be held, though in at least one case the funding was a follow-on to a competition held the previous year, as the increases sometimes continue from year to year.

Top Contractor ‘Wins’

The fiscal 2026 bills include page after page of program increases, many with inscrutable names, such as $5 million for “Thin Wing Actuation” and $7 million for “Layered Tanks.”

Other program increases go to more recognizable weapon names, and these generally require more funds than the smaller-scale initiatives.

In at least a few of these higher-profile cases, members publicly take credit for what some call a “win” in obtaining funding.

For example, Sen. Susan Collins, R- Maine, the Appropriations Committee chair, touted in a July press release how she had “secured significant funding and provisions for Maine” in the Defense bill.

These included $282.5 million not requested by the Defense Department for Pratt & Whitney’s F-35 jet engines, called F135s, made in the company’s facility in North Berwick, Maine. The company is a contributor to the campaign of Collins, among many others, according to OpenSecrets.org^[3].

A Senate aide noted that multiple senators, not just Collins, have backed funding boosts for the engine.

Collins said in the July press release that she also was able to secure bill language prohibiting the consideration of any alternative engine for the F-35. Asked this month about the additional engine money, Collins defended its necessity in a statement and indicated she supports the program for national security reasons, not parochial or selfish ones.

“These investments are necessary to ensure America’s armed forces have the resources needed to counter threats from adversaries,” Collins said.

Another major contractor that has netted unrequested funds is Boeing. The company would receive, for instance, $360 million in the Senate’s fiscal 2026 funding bill for a dozen Apache helicopters that the Army has said it doesn’t want to procure.

The helicopters are built partly in Huntsville, Ala. Sen. Katie Britt, R- Ala., heralded the spending in a press release after the Appropriations Committee, of which she is a member, approved the bill, which the Senate has yet to debate.

Boeing contributes to the campaign and leadership political action committee of Britt, among others.

The fiscal generosity for weapons projects favored by Congress but not the Pentagon is a thoroughly bipartisan phenomenon.

Democratic Sens. Richard J. Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois issued a statement this year trumpeting their success in garnering $88.5 million that the Pentagon did not ask for to upgrade Humvees at the Rock Island Arsenal in their state.

Durbin is a member of the Appropriations Committee, while Duckworth serves on Armed Services.

The work is performed by AM General. The company has contributed to Durbin’s campaign and its parent company, KPS Capital Partners, to Duckworth’s.

Ben Gash Garmisa, a spokesperson for Duckworth, said the senator “has always supported and will continue to support Rock Island Arsenal, as well as programs that ensure our troops are best equipped to execute their missions.”

Garmisa said the Humvees at issue are “critical to several Army capabilities, including medical care and evacuation, that other tactical vehicles cannot perform and for which the Army has yet to identify a capable replacement.”

‘Shadow’ Budget

Much of this spending may be worthwhile -- but, if that is the case, it doesn’t appear that any disinterested observer can prove it.

The Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department Office of the Inspector General have confirmed they haven’t assessed the degree to which these scores of billions of dollars have led to useful weapons.

The appropriations measures say the contracts awarded with this funding must be put out for competition. But the audit agencies have also not reviewed how many of the hundreds of awards parceled out with the funding over the years have attracted more than one bid.

Competition can be legally waived if, for example, only one company is suited to build a certain product.

Moreover, lobbyists and aides have confirmed that, in many cases, the intended recipients of the funding are known from the start.

That is either because the process being funded is proprietary to one company, or the company is already an incumbent builder of the weapon, or the military services know which lawmaker proposed the funding and which entity is expected to receive the money and they tailor the competition’s terms accordingly. CQ Roll Call has reported on previous program increases for fiscal 2022, fiscal 2023, fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025.

Still, for the most part, the identity of these programs’ champions in Congress and the justification for the spending for the overwhelming majority of these projects remains unknown to all but Appropriations Committee members and staff.

“Congress has made important strides to increase transparency over formal earmarks, but thanks to a technical distinction without a practical difference, backdoor earmarks in the Pentagon budget have been thriving in the shadows,” said Murphy of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

© 2025 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

Visit cqrollcall.com.^[4]

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WASHINGTON — Some Democratic senators say they are deeply concerned that a Pentagon plan to allow military lawyers to work as temporary immigration judges^[1] will violate a ban on using service members for law enforcement and affect the military justice system.

The letter, sent to the military services and provided to The Associated Press, comes two weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth^[2] approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges. It is part of the steps the Trump administration has taken to use the military in broader ways^[3] than previously seen, particularly in its immigration crackdown^[4], including sending the National Guard^[5] into American cities and deploying active duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border^[6].

“These military officers would serve under the command and control of the Attorney General and would execute administrative determinations at the direction of the Attorney General,” according to the letter signed by 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It added that “these actions are inherently law enforcement actions that may not be performed by members of the armed forces.”

“We remain extremely disturbed about the impacts on readiness of using military personnel to perform what are traditionally Department of Justice functions,” the letter says.

The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. Since Trump returned to office, dozens of immigration judges have been fired^[7], while others have resigned or taken early retirement.

The senators' letter, sent to the offices of the top military lawyers for the four services on Monday, is asking the Pentagon to say where the roughly 600 lawyers will be coming from and for insight into what legal analysis the military has conducted into whether the move would violate the Posse Comitatus Act^[8]. That law prevents the military from conducting law enforcement outside of extreme emergencies.

A Pentagon memo that described the plan said the lawyers should not be detailed for longer than half a year. The memo also showed that Pentagon officials were cognizant of the possibility for conflict with that law and said the Justice Department would be responsible for ensuring that the military lawyers do not violate it.

The Democratic senators said they were “deeply concerned” that pulling those lawyers away would have an impact on service members who are going through the military’s judicial system.

“These reassignments come at a time only shortly after Congress completely overhauled how the military investigates and prosecutes serious ‘covered’ criminal offenses … by establishing the Offices of Special Trial Counsel (OSTCs) in each of the Services,” the letter read.

Those offices were set up by Congress in 2022^[9] as part of an effort to reform the military justice system by moving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.

The offices began taking cases^[10] at the end of last year.

The letter asks the Pentagon what it will do to “preserve the OSTC’s progress in building specialized trial capacity” and what the services will do to “ensure that diversion of OSTCs, trial counsels, and defense counsels does not create delays or diminish quality in court-martials.” The senators say that the plan is a demonstration of how “the Trump administration views skilled personnel as pawns to be traded between agencies, rather than as professionals essential to their core missions, in order to advance misguided immigration policies."