House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers listens to military leaders testify in April about the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027 budget request.
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House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) has declared that a trillion-dollar-plus Pentagon budget is the “new normal.” But so far, lawmakers have had to sacrifice a core element of their constitutional authority: the ability to direct how federal dollars are spent.
Last year, Congress took the unprecedented step of approving a defense budget exceeding $1 trillion through the highly partisan budget reconciliation process rather than regular order appropriations, which require bipartisan consensus. In doing so, lawmakers dramatically expanded the Pentagon’s ability to move money from one account to another with minimal congressional guidance and oversight. This represents a significant concession of lawmakers’ constitutional power of the purse.
This dynamic is likely to continue in the coming fiscal year. To fulfill President Trump’s $1.5 trillion national security budget request, Congress will need to approve $1.1 trillion for the Pentagon’s base budget, $41.6 billion for nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, $11.9 billion for other defense activities, and an additional $350 billion for the Pentagon through reconciliation. But reconciliation isn’t the only instrument shifting control away from Congress and toward the executive branch.
The annual defense policy bill
The House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill, contains several provisions that would transfer further authority from Congress to the Pentagon. Specifically, sections 813 and 818 would expand the use of “other transactions,” which are nontraditional agreements for research and prototyping that allow the Pentagon to bypass typical requirements for competition and cost transparency. Section 818 permits acquisition portfolio executives to transfer up to 10% of research and development funds to corresponding procurement accounts.
The proposal resembles one made by the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) in a 2024 report. Congress established the commission in the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act and ordered it to study PPBE, the process through which the Pentagon translates strategic guidance documents into acquisition plans. The commission ultimately recommended that lawmakers include in the defense spending bill, a provision “to shift funds between procurement accounts and research, development, test, and evaluation accounts.”
The lawmakers tasked with crafting the defense spending bill pushed back. Indeed, Senate Appropriators wrote that the PPBE commission’s recommendation to establish a special reprogramming authority lacked sufficient rationale. They highlighted that the Pentagon does not fully utilize existing transfer authority, questioning what the PPBE commission’s recommendations to grant the Pentagon greater reprogramming authority would accomplish “other than decreasing the number of notifications to the Congress and reducing oversight.”
Potential impact
Section 818 would require portfolio acquisition executives to notify congressional defense committees and certain Pentagon officials at least fifteen days prior to transfers. Still, its potential impact is significant. For example, the research and development budget for the administration’s controversial multi-layered missile defense shield, dubbed “Golden Dome,” is at least $17.5 billion.
That funding is spread out across multiple portfolios, including space-based sensing and targeting, as well as missile warning and tracking. According to the provision, portfolio executives could redirect substantial portions of that money into weapons production – a major change given the size of the program and lack of detail regarding what and how many systems will be deployed.
Experts across the defense and scientific communities consider Golden Dome technically unworkable. The Pentagon, for its part, has not yet explained how it will build a multi-layered shield. Theoretically, it would have three layers in space and one on land. It would be capable of intercepting ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, as well as drones. Without a technical design for the shield, long-term cost estimates are speculative at best. Even so, the Congressional Budget Office projects the program will cost at least $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years based solely on the administration’s stated objectives, outlined in Executive Order 14186, “The Iron Dome for America.”
If Congress enacts Sections 813 and 818 as currently drafted, the Pentagon would have broad latitude to convert Golden Dome’s research and development funding into procurement. But it is Congress’ job to determine whether and how the Pentagon should prioritize research and development or weapons procurement. Blurring the lines between these categories allows lawmakers to avoid important debates about what capabilities the military needs, why it needs them, and how best to acquire them. Lawmakers’ willingness to relinquish control over how Pentagon funds are spent represents a deep abdication of their constitutional responsibilities.
The bottom line
Taxpayers deserve representatives who scrutinize not only the Pentagon topline number, but also its composition. This is particularly important when it comes to weapons acquisition. Not all research and development or prototyping activities will lead to procurement. This is a feature of the acquisition system, not a bug. It protects taxpayers from investing in unnecessary, unreliable or overly expensive weapons systems.
Deliberation is essential to efficient military spending, especially when it comes to research or prototyping through other transaction agreements – which are typically exempt from standard procurement laws and regulations.
As the House and Senate advance their respective versions of the NDAA this year, members are rightly focused on the administration’s overreliance on reconciliation. Many lawmakers, regardless of their views on defense spending, consider reconciliation an inappropriate vehicle for national security budgeting because it limits congressional guidance and distorts policy priorities.
As Congress considers how to enact the administration’s national security budget request this year, it must likewise beware of legislative proposals to defer even greater authority to the executive branch — undermining congressional control over the nature and direction of Pentagon spending.