A new report finds that lawmakers added nearly $34 billion to the Pentagon’s procurement and research accounts for FY2026, through 1,090 individual program increases, many of which the Defense Department did not even request funds for.
Although individual program increases are not earmarks, they serve a similar function. Formal earmarks themselves were temporarily banned in 2011 to curb lawmaker-driven runaway spending, then reintroduced in 2021 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) as “Community Project Funding,” and “Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS)” in the House and Senate respectively — and subject to transparency requirements, where lawmakers must associate themselves with the earmarks they propose.
But those transparency requirements do not apply to individual program increases, because Congress considers them to be competitively awarded — allowing lawmakers to use program increases like backdoor earmarks, directing funds to favored projects unscrutinized.
“In most cases, we have no idea who is proposing which increases or why,” said Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, DC-based watchdog group that published the report. “Only 32 of the 1,090 increases we catalogued in Procurement, and Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation accounts were supported in floor amendments, which list their sponsors. The remaining 1,058, or 97%, don't list any sponsor.”Funding for defense needs, or pet projects?
Unless they propose program increases through amendments taken to the House or Senate floor, lawmakers do not need to identify themselves as sponsors for program increases in the Pentagon budget. But a small minority of lawmakers individually boast about their increases openly, frequently hailing them as projects that benefit their respective districts or states.
Often, these projects also benefit the defense contractors and affiliated lobbyists which supported their re-election campaigns — underscoring the practice’s potential for conflicts of interest.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Al.), for example, took credit last summer for a proposed $220 million funding increase for 15 Abrams tanks in the Senate version of the FY 2026 Department of Defense Appropriations Act — a move that would support work in her district. (The final version of that bill included a $58.8 million program increase, for four Abrams tanks.) General Dynamics, which makes those tanks, donated $16,000 to Britt’s Senate campaign over the previous two election cycles. Between 2023 and 2024, moreover, General Dynamics also paid $390,000 in lobbying fees to Cornerstone Government Affairs; in turn, individuals affiliated with Cornerstone donated more than $43,000 to Britt’s campaign committee and leadership PAC for the 2024 election cycle.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced the “successful inclusion…of Nebraska priorities,” in the FY 2026 defense appropriations bill, such as $474.4 million for two EA-37B Compass Call aircraft for the 55th Wing, stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in his home state. Between 2019 and 2024, PACs and individuals linked to defense manufacturers L3Harris, BAE Systems, and General Dynamics, which make parts or systems technologies for the aircraft, together contributed more than $145,000 to Rep. Bacon’s campaign committee and leadership PAC.
Likewise, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) published a press release that said she "advanced over $200 million for key national and Nebraska-based defense programs,” including a $60 million FY 2026 defense budget increase for MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopters. Before that backdoor earmark, individuals and PACs associated with Boeing — the MH-139’s primary manufacturer — donated over $34,000 in contributions to Fischer’s 2024 Senate campaign. Boeing also paid about $370,000 in lobbying fees to Cornerstone Government Affairs; individuals associated with that firm, including those lobbying for Boeing, gave almost $8,000 to Fischer’s 2024 Senate campaign.
Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), requested $30 million for the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s UH-60M DVEPS Integration for FY2026, countering the Pentagon’s decision to pause funding for the helicopter pilotage system. After conversations with the defense contractor about DVEPS funding, Rep. Lee said she proposed the increase to help fund a system that would improve flight safety and visibility in dangerous conditions.
“Seeking to improve servicemember safety is a perfectly valid motivation for a program increase,” the Taxpayers for Common Sense report stressed, crediting Lee for disclosing her conversations with the Sierra Nevada Corporation about DVEPS funding. “Still, the lack of transparency in the program increase process means that, were it not for Rep. Lee’s voluntary disclosure, no one would know who proposed the increase.”
As the report mentions, the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s PAC contributed $11,500 to Rep. Lee’s previous two re-election campaigns.Growing consequences
Backdoor earmarks also whisk funding away from important DoD programs, or otherwise tack onto an already runaway Pentagon budget — which has now surpassed $1 trillion, and could ratchet up even higher as lawmakers consider billions in supplemental Pentagon funding for the new war on Iran. According to the report, three-quarters of the increases proposed for FY 2026, funded projects the DoD did not request funds for in its budget request.
For FY 2026, Congress appropriated $1.3 billion less than the Pentagon requested for Operations and Maintenance (O&M), which maintains important military equipment and facilities. Because many of the amendments proposed included O&M cuts, the Taxpayers for Common Sense report deems it “safe to assume” the funding cut helped pay for lawmakers’ backdoor earmarks.
But this funding “offset” also targeted important project elements. Flight training funding was slashed by $20 million — even while aviation accidents, which stem in part from declining training resources, are on the rise.
“Some of these [program] increases are offset by cuts within the Pentagon budget, and some of those cuts of course have consequences for national security,” Murphy told RS. “Lawmakers often aren't grappling with the tradeoffs that they're making by proposing these increases.”
“Some of the increases are not offset, but rather result in a higher [Pentagon budget] topline,” he continued. “Congress added $8.4 billion to the president's budget request this year.”
Perhaps buoyed by lawmakers’ anonymity, backdoor earmarks’ price tag is growing: since FY 2024, the average cost per program increase has surged by about 60%, even as the total number of requests grew by less than 2%.
“Backdoor earmarks are fertile soil for growing even more wasteful spending in the Pentagon's already bloated trillion-dollar budget,” Benjamin Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute, told RS. “It's politicians putting what's good for them or their district ahead of what's good for the nation. When they're doing that with Pentagon funding, it not only wastes money, it makes us all a little less safe.”
“That's bad enough when one member does it, but with more than 500 members of Congress, it's spawned the broken war machine, where we spend more and more and get less and less security every single year,” Freeman said.
Transparency needed
The report recommends Congress require backdoor earmark sponsors to publicly associate themselves with their proposals, offer justifications and long-term cost assessments for them, and indicate which companies might receive contract awards because of them.
“We're calling for transparency. If lawmakers truly believe their proposals are necessary for national security, they should jump at the chance to identify themselves as sponsors and explain their rationale,” Murphy told RS. “Bringing some jobs to their state or district or securing contracts for campaign contributors are not sufficient reasons for piling more tax dollars onto the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.”
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