Washington, D.C. –Taxpayers for Common Sense today released a report titled, “Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Pentagon Budget Increases for the Full-Year CR.” On March 17, 2025, the week after the House and Senate passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025, House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairs Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sent a letter and funding tables to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, claiming in the letter that the funding tables reflect congressional intent as to how the Pentagon should obligate funds at the program, project, and activity level.

The report pulls from a TCS database that shows the increases in these funding tables alongside the increases originally proposed in the House and Senate Defense Appropriations bills. The report reveals that the funding tables submitted for the full-year CR include 463 separate program increases to the Pentagon’s Procurement and Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) accounts, totaling $14,947,210,000, or nearly $15 billion. The report argues that the lack of transparency and accountability surrounding these increases allows lawmakers to target funds to specific recipients to benefit their states, districts, or campaign contributors.

“These program increases are essentially earmarks, but with far less transparency,” said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Earmarks require lawmakers to disclose their involvement in proposing them, spell out their purpose, and certify that they have no financial interest in the earmark. In contrast, program increases are largely anonymous, come with little to no justification, and do not require lawmakers to certify anything.”

The report highlights that over $5.7 billion across 314 program increases were for projects not funded at all in the Pentagon’s budget request. Most increases were proposed behind closed doors, with no indication of who proposed them, for what purpose, and at what long-term cost to taxpayers.

“Most of these increases are for relatively small projects in the range of $5 million to $10 million,” continued Ellis. “But those small increases add up to billions of dollars added to the Pentagon budget with virtually no transparency or public debate.”

Given that the funding tables were submitted to the Pentagon after Congress had already voted on the full-year CR, whether or not they truly represent congressional intent is also in question.

“The fact that Congress never had a chance to review these tables before voting on the CR is scandalous,” said Ellis. “How can something Congress has never seen reflect congressional intent?”

“Tax Day is around the corner, and Americans deserve to know how Congress is spending their money and why,” added Ellis. “Congress should require the same level of transparency for these increases that it requires of earmarks, because for all intents and purposes, that’s what these increases are.”

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Taxpayers for Common Sense is a nonpartisan budget watchdog calling out wasteful spending and advocating for transparency.