Budget Watchdog All Federal

Two lists. A short one for the Congress on its way out, and a longer one for the 120th Congress on its way in.Election Day was last Tuesday. Divided government is back, and the national debt is more than $40 trillion. For the lame duck, TCS’s advice is do no harm: fund the government by December 11, pass a reasonable defense bill, and don’t jam through a wish list on the way out the door.Host Steve Ellis and TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell walk through the to-do list for the new Congress: keep lawmakers out of stock trading and prediction markets, make the three-day rule a real 72 hours, disclose the backdoor earmarks in the Pentagon budget, nearly $34 billion this year, and take back the power of the purse. Then Josh asks Steve to pick the fiscal fix that matters most.Voters said they want solutions, not gridlock. We’ll be here to see whether Washington heard them.

Here's the number to hang on to: 57 percent. That's the share of local emergency management offices in America that run on one full-time employee or less, according to a new census by Argonne National Laboratory. Twenty-two percent have nobody full-time at all.In October, FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton told the nation's state emergency managers to build up their reserves and plan to handle most disasters without federal help, with changes that could start within six months. Days earlier, his seven-page memo to every FEMA employee named objective number one: reduce federal government dependency. The president's FEMA Review Council has already proposed cutting the federal share of disaster costs from at least 75 percent to as little as 50 percent, phased in over two to three years.Host Steve Ellis is joined by TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell, who read the memo so closely he checked whether someone had copied TCS's homework. States should carry their share and prepare before the storm. TCS has said so for years. The question is how far this goes and how fast.Can a state hire, train, and budget its way there in six months, when many legislatures meet for only part of the year and some only every other year? Who does the work if FEMA steps back? And what happens to FEMA's know-how when its workforce is already down about 17 percent?Plus: the weirdest line in the memo, why a levee can be a tool to flood your neighbor, and what taxpayers should watch for when Congress comes back to a December 11 funding deadline.The question was never whether. It's how far and how fast.

Fiscal year 2026 is over, and the books are closed. The Congressional Budget Office puts the deficit just shy of $2 trillion: $218 billion more than the year before, in a year with no pandemic and no recession.Spending grew twice as fast as revenue. Outlays rose $386 billion to $7.4 trillion. Revenue rose $169 billion to $5.4 trillion. Corporate tax receipts fell 16 percent even as corporate income went up. And net interest on the debt hit $1.14 trillion, now the second-biggest line in the federal budget behind only Social Security. That works out to about $3.1 billion a day.Host Steve Ellis is joined by TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell to close the books: what came in, what went out, and who left the tab open. They dig into why the promised tariff windfall turned into roughly $130 billion in refunds after the Supreme Court ruling, why cutting IRS funding costs more in lost collections than it saves, and what higher Treasury rates do to the interest bill. Then a year of receipts: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s deficit promises, GAO’s review of DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” roughly $4 billion paid to offshore wind developers to walk away from their leases, and the $810 million pocket rescission that closed out the fiscal year.Plus: Josh turns the tables on Steve. Is this a both-parties problem or a 119th Congress problem? And what belongs on the lame-duck to-do list before the December 11th deadline.The books on fiscal year 2026 are closed. The tab is still open.

It's the last week of fiscal year 2026, and for once there's no shutdown drama. A continuing resolution runs through December 11. But late Friday, the White House sent Congress $810 million in "pocket rescissions." That's money Congress appropriated and the president signed into law, which the administration now plans to hold until it expires at midnight Wednesday. Congress won't vote on it. The calendar will decide instead.TCS President Steve Ellis and Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell go through what's in the package, including $567 million in HHS programs and grants at Education and Justice. They explain how the 1974 Impoundment Control Act's 45-day clock is supposed to work, and what last year's Supreme Court ruling decided and what it left open. They also cover why GAO calls the move illegal. Two Republicans on Senate Appropriations disagree: Sen. John Kennedy attacks the programs, while Chair Susan Collins attacks the process. Josh and Steve also test the principle by asking what happens when a future president in the other party does the same thing to shipbuilding or highways. Then they look ahead to what taxpayers should watch from GAO, the courts, and a lame-duck Congress after the midterms.

This week, three numbers, one fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office projects $1.1 trillion in net interest on the national debt in fiscal year 2027. The Pentagon is asking for $1.5 trillion. And in Dallas on September 9th, the president promised every adult citizen $5,000 if Republicans hold Congress. Multiply it out and that is roughly $1.2 trillion, about the size of the interest bill.Host Steve Ellis is joined by TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell and policy analyst Gabe Murphy. Josh explains what net interest is, why it is climbing, and what $3 billion a day crowds out. Gabe breaks the Pentagon request into its three parts, scores what Congress has actually done with it, and walks through the top items in the TCS and Project on Government Oversight report identifying more than $500 billion in cuts: Golden Dome, the Sentinel ICBM, and the Trump-class battleship.Plus: what tariffs have actually brought in, how a $1.5 trillion Pentagon baseline feeds the interest bill, and what taxpayers should watch for when the continuing resolution expires December 11th in a lame-duck Congress.Two of those numbers Congress gets to vote on. The third one, we all just pay.

Ground beef hit a record $6.90 a pound in spring 2026 and has stayed there — $6.89 in July. And in August, the Trump administration responded three times in eight days: a 300,000 metric-ton import quota, a signed proclamation, and a social media post promising ranchers could process and sell their own cattle. Objections came from inside the president's own party, with more than a dozen Republican senators and 21 House Republicans raising concerns.So TCS went to the paperwork. Steve Ellis and Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell pulled every presidential and agency action touching agriculture and food prices since January of last year: 16 presidential actions, four more from agencies, and not one requiring a new vote in Congress.Josh sorts out what actually carries the force of law — executive orders, agency rules, proclamations, and Truth Social posts — and why the beef proclamations under Section 404 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act don't touch the real problem. The smallest July cattle herd since 1973. A near-closed Mexican border since May 2025 because of screwworm. Diesel at $5.65 a gallon. The farm share of the retail beef dollar down to 51 percent. And $39.1 billion in farm subsidies since January of last year — including $12 billion in Farmer Bridge payments drawn from the Commodity Credit Corporation's $30 billion line of credit, with roughly none of it headed to cattle producers.With the CCC checkbook sitting open, no farm bill out of committee, and lawmakers floating a cap increase to $90 billion, this isn't a story about beef. It's a story about who decides.

There is an iron law of building complicated things, and it applies to your kitchen renovation exactly the same way it applies to a nuclear-powered warship: the most expensive moment in any project is the moment somebody changes their mind after the work has started.A new presidential memorandum directs the Navy to plan for ripping electromagnetic catapults out of carriers already under construction and putting steam-powered ones back in. The Washington Post reports the Navy is also quietly studying whether to move the island — the multi-story command tower — from the stern toward the middle of the ship, because that's how World War II carriers looked. Ford-class carriers are projected at $22 billion apiece, and the Navy plans to build up to 10.Host Steve Ellis is joined by TCS policy analyst Gabe Murphy to read the fine print. They dig into why the island sits where it sits (stability, safer landings, more sorties), what a steam conversion would actually require — including convincing a manufacturer to restart a production line idle for nearly three decades — and why the USS Doris Miller, already two years behind schedule, could slip into the late 2030s. They also look at the Congressional Budget Office's new score for the Trump-class battleship: $275 billion over 30 years, with the lead ship at $23 billion — more than 31% above the Navy's own estimate from earlier this year. And they ask whether Newport News, the only yard in the country certified to build these ships, can absorb any of it without delaying the Columbia-class subs that carry the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad.It's not all criticism. Gabe flags the parts of the memorandum a budget watchdog should actually like, including allied shipyard partnerships modeled on the Coast Guard's icebreaker deal with Finland.America's shipbuilding problem is real. You don't fix a schedule problem by redrawing the blueprints on ships already on the way — and you don't fix a cost problem by ordering a new class of battleships the Navy doesn't want. Proven, reliable, affordable: we'd just like to see the receipts, especially in the week federal debt topped $40 trillion.

The House passes a CR with two months left on the clock.A punt is a concession you make when you've run out of downs. The House made this one on first down. With more than two months left in the fiscal year and none of the twelve appropriations bills finished, it passed a continuing resolution funding the government at fiscal year 2026 levels through December 4th, largely on party lines. Appropriations Chair Tom Cole calls the bill clean. Steve Ellis and TCS Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell take that word apart. Clean means no partisan poison pills. It does not mean neutral. Extending the current base level for the Pentagon, for the Justice Department, for every agency, is a choice about priorities — just one nobody has to vote on.Then there's the White House anomalies list, transmitted before every CR. Some items are housekeeping: updating a program date, dropping funding for an inauguration three years away. Others are not. The list includes $1 billion to start building a Trump-class battleship whose design isn't finished — the same concurrent-design approach that produced an F-35 fleet fully mission capable about 30 percent of the time. It includes $3.2 billion in defense-wide procurement justified only by information available at a higher classification. And it would shield unobligated One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds from the standard 8 percent sequestration clawback, while the Pentagon sits on $89 billion of that money unspent and asks separately for $73 billion for the war with Iran.Steve and Josh also dig into Senate Majority Leader Thune's threat to fall back on reconciliation if Democrats won't deal, the Lankford-Hassan bill that would make automatic two-week CRs painful enough to keep members in town and working, and the record underneath all of it: Congress has finished all twelve appropriations bills on time four times in more than fifty years. The last was 1997.

The Pentagon's FY2027 budget request comes in at $1.54 trillion — a 45% increase over current spending. TCS teamed up with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on a new report, How to Cut a Half a Trillion Dollars from the Pentagon Budget Request and Strengthen National Security, identifying nearly $500 billion in defensible cuts to acquisition programs.Gabe Murphy (TCS) is joined by POGO's Greg Williams and Virginia Burger to walk through the methodology and the specifics: munitions replenishment in the wake of Epic Fury, an F-35 procurement freeze tied to a 1-in-4 fleet readiness rate, the unproven sixth-generation fighter program, cost overruns on the Sentinel ICBM, redundant B-21 bomber spending, Ford-class carrier production issues, the newly proposed Trump-class battleship, Golden Dome missile defense, and Pentagon contractor subsidies.Full report and cut list at taxpayer.net.

America turns 250, and the fiscal ledger is sobering: $39.3 trillion in national debt — 85% of it accumulated in just the last 25 years. TCS President Steve Ellis and Director of Research & Policy Josh Sewell set aside the holiday Wastebasket they planned to write and instead take a hard look at how the republic arrived here. From the $430 million in daily debt averaged across 250 years, to $8 trillion in interest payments since 2010, to a new $88 billion emergency supplemental that stretches the definition of "emergency," Ellis and Sewell make the case that the nation's fiscal trajectory is a bipartisan problem requiring bipartisan solutions — and that the next 250 years depend on the choices made now.