Congress approved 1,090 increases for Pentagon procurement and research projects in the fiscal year 2026 defense spending bill. Those increases cost nearly $34 billion — $33,973,694,000, to be more precise — according to a new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. The 2026 total nearly matches those for the previous two years combined, though 2025 was anomalous because the Pentagon was operating under a full-year stopgap spending measure and spending caps enacted in 2023 limited spending increases. The 2026 total is also more than double the $15.5 billion in non-defense earmarks approved by lawmakers in the spending bills passed for the year.
The report says that the jump in 2026 increases “is all the more astounding” given that President Trump’s budget request included a 13% increase in Pentagon spending after accounting for an extra budgetary boost provided as part of the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Taxpayers for Common Sense says that, while some of the congressional program increases may serve legitimate national security purposes, they also “often function as backdoor earmarks, allowing lawmakers to anonymously target funds to specific recipients.”
The report notes that most of the program increases were proposed anonymously and three-quarters of them provided money for projects that the Pentagon did not seek funding for in its budget request. It also warns of the potential conflicts of interest and political incentives that drive increases in the Pentagon budget without much public oversight or accountability.
“The lack of transparency, public debate, and competitive selection processes for these increases has created a process through which lawmakers can, for all intents and purposes, earmark funds for projects that will likely create jobs in their state or district, benefit companies that contributed to their campaigns, or both, all with virtually no public scrutiny,” the report says. “This process in turn fuels wasteful and unnecessary spending that consistently leads to higher topline Pentagon budgets. An analysis of the number and cost of these increases in recent years shows that both are growing at an alarming rate.”
The report recommends that lawmakers requesting increases should do so publicly, offer justification for the higher spending and assessments of the long-term costs and certify that they have no financial interest in the increase, among other changes.