The House passed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday last week, which authorizes $901 billion in military spending — $8 billion more than Donald Trump asked for. An additional $156 billion was included in the Big Beautiful Bill, so the NDAA’s passage signals congressional support not only for its many ugly provisions, but also for a $1 trillion-plus military budget next year.
Historic increases in military spending like the one authorized by the NDAA enable Trump’s foreign policy and practically define his domestic agenda. Money is policy. If …
The House passed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday last week, which authorizes $901 billion in military spending — $8 billion more than Donald Trump asked for. An additional $156 billion was included in the Big Beautiful Bill, so the NDAA’s passage signals congressional support not only for its many ugly provisions, but also for a $1 trillion-plus military budget next year.
Historic increases in military spending like the one authorized by the NDAA enable Trump’s foreign policy and practically define his domestic agenda. Money is policy. If you oppose war with Venezuela, occupations of US cities, or a historic transfer of public wealth to private companies partly paid for by cuts to social programs, you vote against the NDAA. If you’re fine with or get excited about those things, you vote for the bill.
I recommended that members of Congress oppose the bill. Only a quarter of them did: the bill passed by a 312-112 margin.
Public Opinion vs. Congress
If congressional votes reflected public opinion, the bill wouldn’t have passed. Only one in ten voters want a bigger military budget, but more than seven in ten House members voted for one on Wednesday.
The discrepancy is illustrated in the following graph. Each pair of bars compares public opinion on military spending and House votes on the same issue. The percentages are the share of voters who support increasing military spending and the share of House members who voted to authorize one through the NDAA.
On one hand, Republicans overwhelmingly voted for the NDAA, and are further out of step with the views of their base than their House counterparts. On the other hand, the bill wouldn’t have passed without the support of Democrats, who just handed a trillion-dollar military budget to a guy they’ve called authoritarian for the past decade.
Cash for Votes
I looked at the money behind the 424 House votes on the NDAA. Specifically, I compared how each House member voted with the amount they accepted from arms industry donors last election cycle (2023–24).
On average, members who voted to authorize $901 billion in military spending received four times as much money from military contractors as those opposed. (This four-to-one ratio between yes and no votes holds whether you take the mean or median for each group. The chart below refers to the mean.)
I can’t imagine you’re surprised by the results. I’m not surprised, either: I’ve run this analysis since 2018 and found the same correlation — politicians voting to increase military spending taking more money from military contractors — every single year.
Considering the share of military contractors’ revenue from the US government, much of the money they give members of Congress originally came from taxpayers. Arms companies are recycling funds back to the people who signed off on that funding in the first place, helping ensure that Congress doesn’t represent public opinion on how federal dollars should be allocated. Military spending doesn’t just buy weapons, it buys a way of life.
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