December 10, 2025
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NTU urges all Members to vote “NO” on the Rules Committee Print 119–16 of the House Amendment to S. 1071, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This conferenced version of the NDAA, while better in several ways than the previous Senate version of the bill, is still $8 billion above the President’s budget request level, on top of the increased defense spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) of over $156 billion over its 10-year window.
While the bill also makes various changes, both desirable and undesirable, to the War Department’s procurement process, it goes against requests from warfighters in the ranks by removing House and Senate approved “right to repair” language, increasing both taxpayer costs and risks to military readiness. At a time of record debt and trillion-dollar deficits, lawmakers should pursue discretionary spending reductions to defense and non-defense functions. Lawmakers should reject this legislation as written and support amendments to improve the fiscal position of the bill.
Year after year, NTU warns lawmakers that they are authorizing and appropriating far too many taxpayer dollars for defense spending. This has been the case for budgets passed by Republican-controlled Congresses and Democratic-controlled Congresses, under Republican and Democratic presidents, in times of war, and in times of relative peace. As the nation pulls back from unwieldy foreign military commitments and focuses on defending the homeland, it must confront a $38 trillion debt and trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. It is time for lawmakers to pivot away from decades of profligacy in federal spending and begin reducing deficits. This politically-challenging pivot should occur for both defense and non-defense discretionary spending, and, of course, lawmakers should also pursue long-term reforms for the more than 60% of spending that is effectively on autopilot as mandatory spending.
We understand that lawmakers must face rising challenges from adversaries across the globe, many of whom seem to be aggressively expanding the scope and lethality of their militaries. While we recognize that the conferenced NDAA bill has properly cancelled the Constellation frigate program, Congress should continue to refocus spending away from outdated or wasteful defense projects, like the F-35, and toward more beneficial projects better suited to defend the homeland and project strength abroad. Lawmakers should support the Trump Administration’s efforts to modernize our defensive strategy, improve defense procurement, and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.
We are also dismayed that the conferenced NDAA bill removed important “right to repair” provisions that would allow the military to fix equipment in the field, without the need to deal with delayed and overpriced contractor support. In wartime, these delays could be the difference between victory and defeat. The current bill even creates a pilot program that would provide an extra giveaway to contractors, by making their interest payments “allowable costs.” If anything, the Pentagon should include the interest costs on the national debt for its own budget requests.
To more thoroughly investigate problematic projects like this, Congress should enhance the ability of its watchdogs (like the Government Accountability Office) to study wasteful spending at the Department of War. Absent appropriate overall reductions to the authorized levels of spending, as well as appropriate directional changes in key defense programs, lawmakers should reject this legislation.
Roll call votes will be included in NTU’s annual Rating of Congress and “NO” votes will be considered the pro-taxpayer position.
If you have any questions, please contact NTU Senior Policy Manager David Timmons at dtimmons@ntu.org