Lessons from this year’s unfunded priority lists

Exceeding $50 billion and arriving amid a unique federal budget cycle, this year’s unfunded priority lists from uniformed military leaders offer a lot to consider.

Let us summarize the environment in which they were submitted. In a historic first, Congress failed to pass an appropriations bill for the Defense Department for the current fiscal year. Lawmakers then passed a reconciliation bill, which gives DOD more than $150 billion in FY 2025 funding, spendable over several years. (Interestingly, the White House Office of Management and Budget characterizes most of the reconciliation funding as part of the President’s budget request for FY 2026.) While President Trump talks about nearly $1 trillion in 2026 defense funding, the actual proposed budget contains about $850 billion—less tha