2026 Prime Cuts

Introduction

The United States is hurtling towards a fiscal cliff.

The national debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time on August 18, 2026, an increase of 100.8 percent from $19.95 trillion at the beginning of President Trump’s first term in January 2017. A February 17, 2026, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget and economic outlook report forecast an increase in the budget deficit from $1.9 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2026 to $3.1 trillion in FY 2036. Over that 10-year period, annual deficits will average $2.44 trillion and add $24.4 trillion to the national debt, bringing gross federal debt to $64.6 trillion by FY 2036, 61.5 percent more than the current $40 trillion debt. The FY 2036 debt would equal 120 percent of GDP, surpassing its previous high of 106 percent of GDP in 1946.

Unlike in 1946, the United States is not recovering from a World War. Instead, the country is in the midst of a collective failure by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government to take the steps necessary to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement and get spending under control. The unsustainability of this fiscal inaction is vividly illustrated by interest payments on the national debt, which are the third largest federal expenditure after Social Security and Medicare, and ahead of the defense budget.

The fiscal morass has been exacerbated by several massive spending packages, including bills signed into law in response to COVID-19 starting in the first Trump administration and expanding during the Biden administration. The $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 was signed into law on November 15, 2021.

Then, on August 16, 2022, H.R. 5376, after being enacted by Congress solely by Democrats, the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law by President Biden. It included $369 billion in climate change-related spending, the most in a single bill in history; $80 billion to hire 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents; and the establishment of drug price “negotiations” that created price caps for certain drugs purchased by Medicare, which as predicted has reduced research and innovation by biopharmaceutical companies.

To help mitigate the fiscal tsunami, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is releasing the 2026 edition of Prime Cuts, which has been published since 1993. This year’s version contains 494 recommendations that address every area of federal spending and would save taxpayers $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years. Prime Cuts compiles a list of new and longstanding proposals from CAGW in addition to recommendations from both Democratic and Republican administrations and members of Congress, as well as nonpartisan sources.

Prime Cuts 2026 addresses every area of government spending.  For example, the report proposes eliminating the Market Access Program (MAP), which helps agricultural producers promote U.S. products overseas. MAP is a corporate welfare program that funnels millions of dollars to large, profitable corporations and trade associations that can afford to pay for their own advertisements. Eliminating MAP would save taxpayers $907 million over five years.

Another egregious example of corporate welfare is the use of tax-exempt municipal bond financing for professional sports stadiums. Section 103 of the Internal Revenue Code allows state and local governments to issue tax-advantaged bonds that provide an indirect federal subsidy for sports arenas owned by private, for-profit enterprises. There were 57 professional stadiums constructed or renovated between 2000 and 2019, and 43 used tax-exempt bonds, resulting in $4.3 billion in lost federal tax revenue. Congress should ensure these bonds are no longer treated as tax-exempt, saving taxpayers $1.1 billion over five years.

Numerous cuts can be made at the Department of Defense (DOD) without jeopardizing national security, including eliminating the $778.5 million Abrams Upgrade Program, which converts the M1 Abrams battle tank into the M1A2SEPv3 variant. On September 6, 2023, DOD announced that, instead of pursuing this upgrade to the Abrams, it will shift to the M1E3, which integrates new technologies. Despite the Pentagon’s preference for the new tank, Congress continues to fund the Abrams Upgrade Program and the M1A2SEPv3 variant, misdirecting finite resources.

Congress should also eliminate the Essential Air Service (EAS). Established in 1978 as a temporary 10-year program to maintain rural air connections after deregulation, EAS has dragged on for decades. Today, it subsidizes mostly empty flights, sometimes spending thousands of dollars per passenger, for communities located just a short drive from major airports. President Trump’s FY 2027 budget called for a $372 million cut to EAS, but trimming this outdated program is not enough. Scrapping EAS entirely would save taxpayers $3.8 billion over five years.

Healthcare is another area ripe for savings. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was created in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to develop and test payment and service models for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Instead, it has delivered failure. CBO projected savings of $2.8 billion between 2011 and 2020, but it cost taxpayers $5.4 billion, with another $1.3 billion in projected losses through 2030. Only six of 50 models met the statutory criteria necessary to be expanded nationwide. After 16 years of failure, Congress should eliminate CMMI, saving $4.1 billion over five years.

The recommendations also include longstanding proposals to eliminate the sugar and dairy programs, reduce Medicare improper payments by 50 percent, and sell excess federal property.

This Prime Cuts Summary contains 19 recommendations, in order of one-year savings, that would save $31 billion in the first year and $157.9 billion over five years.  The full database of recommendations can be accessed at CAGW.org/PrimeCuts.

By following the blueprint provided by CAGW’s Prime Cuts 2026, wasteful government spending can be reined in, and the nation can begin to chart a path toward fiscal sanity.  Prime Cuts 2026 is essential reading for taxpayers, the media, and legislators alike.

Reduce the U.S. Annual Contribution to the United Nations (UN) by 50 Percent

1-Year Savings: $7.2 billion  5-Year Savings: $35.8 billion

The U.S. is the largest contributor to the UN. In FY 2024, the U.S. provided $14.3 billion, or 30.6 percent of the UN’s budget. The FY 2024 contribution represented a 125.2 percent increase over the FY 2009 contribution of $6.35 billion and a 346.9 percent increase over the $3.2 billion contributed in FY 2001.  Since 2001, the UN’s regular budget has more than doubled and its peacekeeping budget has more than tripled, a rate of growth that is much faster than the economies of its member nations.

The Trump administration proposed a 50 percent budget cut for the U.S. contribution to the UN in its FY 2017 budget, which was reduced to a 5 percent reduction, or $285 million, in the UN’s 2018-2019 budget following negotiations with the State Department. On February 4, 2025, the White House announced the United States’ withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. The White House announced on July 22, 2025, that it would leave the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in December 2026.

The February 4, 2025, announcement noted that while the U.S. helped establish the UN after World War II, it has strayed from its mission to stop future wars and promote peace and acts against U.S. interests. The Trump administration did not request funding in its FY 2026 and FY 2027 budgets for UNESCO or UN peacekeeping programs.

As the U.S. attempts to grapple with mounting deficits and debt, organizations like the UN should not be spared the knife when it comes to trimming the budget fat.  Because UN spending has increased so dramatically and the organization continues to be bloated and inefficient, it makes sense to cut U.S. spending by 50 percent.  After all, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once estimated that “perhaps half of the UN work force does nothing useful.”

Reduce Medicare Improper Payments By 50 Percent Over Five Years

1-Year Savings: $5.7 billion  5-Year Savings: $28.5 billion

Because of its chronic vulnerability to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) since 1990 has designated the Medicare program as high risk. The February 25, 2025, High Risk report noted that, “spending is expected to increase significantly over the next decade as the U.S. population ages and more individuals begin receiving Medicare benefits.” The April 16, 2024, High Risk report noted that, “the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to be depleted in 2028. At that point, the Medicare program’s revenue would be sufficient to pay about 90 percent of scheduled benefits.” According to an April 27, 2026, GAO report, improper payments for Medicare were $57 billion in FY 2025, an increase of $3 billion from $54 billion in FY 2024.

In a bipartisan effort to reduce improper payments and help stave off the impending bankruptcy of the Medicare Trust Fund, Congress first implemented a recovery audit contractor (RAC) demonstration project for Medicare Parts A and B that ran from 2005 to 2008 and recovered more than $900 million in overpayments to providers.  In 2010, the program was made permanent and expanded nationwide, and the ACA added Parts C and D.

Since the beginning of the RAC program, $11 billion has been returned to the Medicare Trust Fund. In FY 2013, RACs collected $3.65 billion, according to the Medicare Trustees’ report to Congress on the program.

The Trustees’ FY 2013 RAC report called the RAC program, which has an average accuracy rate of 96 percent, “an important initiative in CMS’s goal to reduce improper payments and pay claims accurately.”

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the volume of claims that RACs are now permitted to review was reduced from a high of 2 percent, which is meager to begin with for a $568 billion agency that processes more than one billion claims per year, to a statistically insignificant .5 percent and the claims areas have dropped from more than 800 to 163. Not surprisingly, the undermining of the program has significantly reduced monetary recoveries to the Trust Fund.

Congress should restore the full scope of the RAC program and allow the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to recover tens of billions in improper payments that continue to hemorrhage out of Medicare.

Eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs)

1-Year Savings: $3.3 billion  5-Year Savings: $16.5 billion

In the 1970s, many American cities suffered from destitution and blight. In 1974, Congress created the CDBG program in an effort to revitalize low-income areas in cities across the country. Three years later during the 1977 World Series, swathes of New York’s South Bronx burned to the ground as renowned sportscaster Howard Cosell narrated on national television.

The CDBG program funds infrastructure investment, housing rehabilitation, job creation, and public services in metropolitan cities and urban counties. Use of the grants was intended to be flexible, but the more than $100 billion given away to local governments over the last 35 years has fallen short on both accountability and results. Buffalo, New York, received more than $500 million in CDBGs over 30 years, with little to show for it. Los Angeles handed out $24 million to a dairy that went bust 18 months later.

The CDBG eligibility formula does not take a community’s average income into account. As a result, wealthy cities with robust tax bases have received CDBG dollars. A September 2012 GAO report found that “some cities with higher unemployment rates received less funding per unemployed person than other cities with lower unemployment rates.”

Former President Obama routinely recommended reducing CDBG funding because “the demonstration of outcomes [is] difficult to measure and evaluate.” President Trump’s budgets between FYs 2018 and 2021 recommended eliminating the entire CDBG program. The second Trump administration called for the program’s elimination in its FY 2026 budget, stating that, “CDBG is poorly targeted, and the program has been used for a variety of projects that the Federal Government should not be funding, such as improvement projects at a brewery, a plaza for concerts, and skateboard parks. … For example, the Town of Greenwich in Connecticut’s famously affluent ‘Gold Coast’ does not need Federal grants, yet it received nearly $4 million in CDBG funding in the last five years and spent it on wasteful projects like theater arts programming for students and public swimming pool renovations.”

Despite its lengthy record of failing to achieve its objectives and wasting the taxpayers’ money, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Trump on March 27, 2020, provided $2 billion for the CDBG program, which represents 60.6 percent of the $3.3 billion appropriated in FY 2026.

Sell Excess Federal Real Property

1-Year Savings: $3 billion  5-Year Savings: $15 billion

Due to a combination of negative incentives and unnecessary red tape, selling federal real estate is a long, costly process. Reforms are essential, because Uncle Sam owns more real property than any other entity in America: approximately 267,000 buildings and structures covering 1.9 billion square feet of office space. An October 31, 2017, Congressional Research Service (CRS) report found that, “In FY 2016, federal agencies owned 3,120 buildings that were vacant (unutilized), and another 7,859 that were partially empty (underutilized).”

The General Services Administration (GSA) reported total assets of $86.5 billion in FY 2025, a 2.9 percent decrease from the $89.1 billion reported in FY 2024, and a 43.4 percent increase from the $60.3 billion in FY 2023. The real estate includes 8,500 assets and an “inventory of almost 360 million square feet.”

When the GSA Public Buildings Service reports a property as excess, that property must first be screened for use by other federal agencies. If another agency wants it, that agency gets it. If the property goes unclaimed by every eligible agency, according to Title 40 of the U.S. Code and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, it must be screened for use by providers of homeless shelters, who can use the property for free. If shelters are not interested, the property is screened for other public uses and sold for up to a 100 percent discount on market value. Finally, if no public use can be identified, the property is auctioned and sold. That process is upside down: The government should first try to sell the property and give it away only if there is no other alternative.

The government’s current leasing practices are also problematic. They have been on the GAO’s High Risk List since January 1, 2003, and were one of three areas that regressed in the February 25, 2025, High Risk report. GAO found that while the GSA has improved the “accuracy of addresses in its Federal Real Property Profile database, the data are not yet reliable. This makes it difficult to manage federally owned assets.”

A March 2014 GAO report reviewed case study projects from four agencies that rank in the top 10 in federal real property holdings.  The GAO found that the federal government can end up spending more money on renovation costs and lease payments over the course of a long-term lease than it would if it just paid the initial contract price and bought the building outright. A July 15, 2015, GAO report found that, “GSA’s progress toward a sustainable portfolio is unclear because GSA has not assessed the gap between the performance the portfolio needs to exhibit to be sustainable and its current performance.”

The GSA also operates the Federal Buildings Fund (FBF), which is funded by rent received from other agencies.  FBF revenue, which is used to fund alterations, repairs, and construction projects, increased from $56 million in FY 2007 to $21.6 billion at the end of FY 2025, an increase of 38,471 percent.  

On December 12, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Federal Property Management Reform Act of 2016. The act requires federal agencies to assess space that is not fully occupied and provide an annual list of real property under their control, along with their condition; obliges the U.S. Postal Service to annually provide a list of properties with available space for federal agencies; and establishes the Federal Real Property Council to help guide and implement an “efficient and effective real property management strategy,” reduce expenses, and determine how to better manage assets and property.

On December 20, 2017, GSA released an inventory of federal real property. It identified 5,066 bathrooms, 16,570 parking lots and garages, along with more than 1,500 prisons, nearly 17,000 warehouses, 766 hospitals and 2,427 schools. The transparency provided in this report improves the government’s ability to identify and eliminate vacant, wasteful property.

Unfortunately, progress has been slow. A June 8, 2023, GAO report found that it took nearly two years to sell any of the 12 properties that the Office of Management and Budget sanctioned for sale in 2019. As of May 2023, 10 of the properties had been sold, raising $194 million.

In the meantime, a startling amount of federal office space remains empty. An October 26, 2023, GAO report noted that 17 of 24 federal agency headquarter buildings sampled from January through March 2023 used on average 25 percent or less of their capacity. The Treasury Department was the only agency with more than 31 percent occupancy. The GAO report noted that federal agencies spend approximately $2 billion each year operating and maintaining buildings, regardless of occupancy, and around $5 billion annually to lease office buildings.

At a September 27, 2024, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing, then-Ranking Member Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said that this situation is “simply unacceptable.” Then-Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-Del.) noted that more than 50 percent of current GSA leases will expire by 2027, which provides sufficient time to reduce the federal footprint.

In 2025, GAO added the condition of federal buildings to its High Risk list, stating that agencies have deferred maintenance and repairs on many buildings, creating a backlog. An April 8, 2025, GAO report noted that the federal government’s “annual maintenance and operating costs for its 277,000 buildings exceeded $10.3 billion in fiscal year 2023.” The report also found that repair backlogs have “more than doubled,” from $171 billion in FY 2017 to $370 billion in FY 2024.

The GAO noted in an April 9, 2026, report that the GSA has sold more than 900 properties since 2013, raising $1.4 billion in revenue, but that it could do more to simplify the process of selling unneeded properties and reduce the timeline for sales to the private sector.

Eliminate Federal Subsidies for Amtrak

1-Year Savings: $2.4 billion  5-Year Savings: $12.1 billion

Since Amtrak was created in 1971, it has cost taxpayers more than $40 billion. The railroad was supposed to earn a profit but has continuously failed to do so. In some cases, it is less expensive to use other forms of transportation. A 2009 study found that taxpayers paid $32 in subsidies per Amtrak passenger. By booking a month or more in advance, it is possible to buy a round-trip plane ticket from New Orleans to Los Angeles for less than the $437.82 that Amtrak loses per passenger on a one-way trip between those same locations.

A January 2018 Ernst and Young audit found that, “the Company has a history of operating losses and is dependent upon substantial Federal Government subsidies to sustain its operations and maintain its underlying infrastructure.” An August 2, 2012, New York Times article reported that Amtrak had lost $834 million on food service alone since 2002, largely due to employee theft.

Unfortunately, the waste and abuse does not end with food sales. The Amtrak Office of Inspector General (IG) has issued several reports detailing inadequate supervision, including a September 2012 report that investigated two employees who received fraudulent pay for hours they never worked. One employee was paid $5,600 in regular and overtime pay “when he was actually off Amtrak property officiating at high school sporting events.” Another employee was observed for 84 days, and it was discovered that, “$16,500 of the $27,000, or 61 percent of the overtime wages he was paid were fraudulent.” The IG concluded that, since it is likely that this employee had a history of fraudulent overtime pay, the amount of fraudulent pay “would be approximately $143,300 of the $234,928 that he was paid.”

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Northeast Corridor had the only routes that were making an operating profit. The long-distance and lesser-used routes cost the most to operate and lose the most money. Given this information, any well-managed privately-owned business would have shut down these lines years ago. As a consequence of this mismanagement, and the impact of COVID-19 on ridership, Amtrak incurred a $1.8 billion annual net loss from FYs 2022 to 2025.

Even ignoring the impact of COVID-19 on ridership, Amtrak’s prospects for financial success is bleak. Early proponents of Amtrak have voiced skepticism. Former Amtrak spokesman and rail expert Joseph Vranich asserted that, “Amtrak is a massive failure because it’s wedded to a failed paradigm. It runs trains that serve political purposes as opposed to being responsive to the marketplace. America needs passenger trains in selected areas, but it doesn’t need Amtrak’s antiquated route system, poor service and unreasonable operating deficits.” The so-called “Father of Amtrak,” Anthony Haswell, also regrets his involvement, stating, “I feel personally embarrassed over what I helped to create.”

The only reason Amtrak trains are still running is Congress’s handouts over the decades of negative financial results. The CARES Act awarded Amtrak $1 billion, or 41.7 percent of the $2.4 billion appropriated in FY 2024. While this seemed like a significant amount of money at the time, it was quickly dwarfed by the $66 billion awarded for passenger and freight rail in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This funding included $44 billion for the Federal Railroad Administration, which manages grants for Amtrak; $18 billion to expand service to “new corridors” that could include former President Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where passenger service was eliminated the year before Amtrak was created; $12.6 billion for modernizing stations and safety improvements in the Amtrak National Network; and $6.6 billion to improve infrastructure in its Northeast Corridor, including new passenger rail cars.

Opening up the spigot of taxpayer funding to eliminate any need for Amtrak to think about making a profit may keep the trains running and the service expanding, but that will do nothing to address the inherent problems with the railroad, including poor financial management and a failed business model.

Reform the 340B Drug Pricing Program

1-Year Savings: $1.6 billion  5-Year Savings: $8 billion

Like other federal healthcare programs, the 340B drug discount program was well-intentioned but has increased costs and been a prime example of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Created in 1992, the 340B program requires pharmaceutical manufacturers participating in Medicaid to sell drugs at a discount of 20 to 50 percent to covered entities, including non-profit hospitals and federally funded clinics like community health centers, black lung clinics, tuberculosis clinics, and hemophilia treatment centers.

The legislation that created 340B did not define eligibility or require that savings be passed on to patients. The lack of guardrails on the program has led to a broad interpretation of eligibility and allowed the program to be used as a way for hospitals and contract pharmacies to pocket profits rather than providing discounts to patients. It has also been referred to as a “reverse Robin Hood” scheme in which hospitals in wealthy communities siphon money from hospitals in lower-income areas.

340B has grown exponentially. In 2005, 340B covered entities purchased $2.4 billion in drugs. In 2025, drug purchases reached $100 billion, an increase of 4,066.7 percent, making 340B the second largest federal prescription drug program after Medicare Part D.

A September 2025 CBO report described the causes of the growth of 340B, including the disproportionate increase in spending on cancer drugs, which account for 41 percent of purchases and three times the amount of any other drugs; merging of hospitals and outside clinics; expanded eligibility of facilities under the ACA; and increased use of contract pharmacies outside of 340B hospitals. A September 21, 2025, Wall Street Journal editorial described how well-financed 340B hospitals use 340B discounts to finance the acquisition of competing providers that are not eligible for 340B discounts, which increases healthcare market consolidation and raises costs for insurers and patients.

A September 24, 2022, New York Times article analyzed how 340B was being abused at Richmond (Virginia) Community Hospital, owned by Bon Secours.  Rather than reinvesting profits from 340B drug sales into its facilities and improving patient care, the money was being diverted to Bon Secours’ facilities in Richmond’s wealthier neighborhoods.  Dr. Lucas English, who worked in the hospital’s emergency department until 2018, said, “Bon Secours was basically laundering money through this poor hospital to its wealthy outposts … It was all about profits.”  Dr. Peter B. Bach, who has written about the use of 340B profits to open more clinics in wealthier areas, said the hospitals are “nakedly capitalizing on programs that are intended to help poor people.”

The 340B program not only hurts patients but also costs taxpayers billions of dollars and increases costs for employers. A May 2024 Health Capital Group report found that the increased participation in 340B between 2014 and 2021 raised Medicaid spending by $391 per enrollee, or $32 billion annually, accounting for approximately 10 percent of total Medicaid spending. A March 2024 IQVIA report found that 340B increased costs by more than $5 billion annually for employer health plans regulated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The American Benefits Council’s February 2025 report reiterated and expanded on that finding, stating that 340B “is raising health care costs for employer-sponsored health plans by $5.2 billion annually through the loss of rebates, and additionally by promoting the increased use of higher-cost therapies and fueling hospital and provider consolidation.”

Since 340B was created by a federal statute, Congress must enact legislation to reform the program. An April 24, 2025, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee report on 340B recommended clarifying patient eligibility and ensuring that the savings are passed on to the patients. During the second session of the 119th Congress, two bills and a HELP Committee discussion draft were introduced to reform 340B. While the three proposals differ in patient definitions, contract pharmacy rules, discount models, and transparency measures, they attempt to address weaknesses in 340B and rein in the abuses of the program.

340B reforms should include a clear definition of 340B eligibility and verification at the time the prescription is filled, a relationship between the patient and the covered entity, verification that services were provided within the past 12 months, and increased transparency. By reforming the 340B program, CAGW has made a conservative estimate that taxpayers would save $1.6 billion in one year and $8 billion over five years, which is 5 percent of the $32 billion in annual costs to Medicaid.

Eliminate Earmarks for the Defense Health Program (DHP)

1-Year Savings: $1.5 billion  5-Year Savings: $7.5 billion

Members of Congress have for years loaded up the DHP with pork, including $1.5 billion for 58 anonymous earmarks in FY 2026, the fourth-most ever earmarked for the program, although this was a 22.9 percent decrease in cost from the 54 earmarks worth $1.9 billion in FY 2024. The $1.5 billion in FY 2026 DHP earmarks represented 18.8 percent of the $8 billion in total DOD earmarks. Since FY 1996, members of Congress have added 1,024 earmarks for the DHP, costing taxpayers $24.3 billion.

A March 14, 2012, Washington Post article stated that then-DOD Comptroller Robert Hale proposed decreasing the Pentagon health budget in part by eliminating “one-time congressional adds,” which he said totaled $603.6 million in FY 2012 for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program.

The late Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) November 2012 “The Department of Everything” report pointed out that the DOD disease earmarks mean that “fewer resources are available for DOD to address those specific health challenges facing members of the armed forces for which no other agencies are focused.” According to the report, in 2010 the Pentagon withheld more than $45 million for overhead related to earmarks, which means those funds were unavailable for national security needs or medical research specifically affecting those serving in the military.

On June 17, 2015, then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) suggested that funding for medical research should only be included in the DOD bill if the secretary of defense determined it was directly related to the military. He said that “over the past two decades, lawmakers have appropriated nearly $7.3 billion for medical research that was ‘totally unrelated’ to the military.” In a response that explains why legislators continue to believe that they have the knowledge, privilege, and right to earmark billions of dollars for the DHP, Senate appropriator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) claimed that none of the secretaries of defense that he had known, despite being “talented individuals,” were qualified to decide whether any of this research is related to the military.

Eliminate the Sugar and Dairy Subsidies

1-Year Savings: $1.2 billion  5-Year Savings: $6.2 billion

In 2025, the federal government paid $34.9 billion in subsidies to farmers, a 112.8 percent increase from the $16.4 billion provided in 2024. The 2025 subsidy was the second-highest total pocketed by farmers since 1995, behind only the $44.1 billion in 2020. Over this timeframe, the U.S. has provided $573.9 billion in subsidies to farmers. These expenditures include numerous antiquated agricultural subsidy programs that should be scrapped.

At the top of the list is the sugar program, an outdated, Soviet-style command-and-control program that was first established in the Sugar Act of 1934 and now uses import quotas, loans, marketing allotments, price supports, and tariffs to artificially inflate the price of sugar. The program includes a minimum price for sugar in the U.S., which averages roughly double the world price. The marketing controls limit how much a small cartel of sugar processors are allowed to sell.

The tariff rate quotas on sugar imports require that 85 percent of sugar purchases be bought from domestic sugar producers and limit the amount of sugar that can be imported each year from 40 countries. Any sugar that is imported beyond the quota is subject to a tariff, contributing to the high cost of sugar in the U.S.

A November 2017 American Enterprise Institute (AEI) analysis found that, “The welfare transfer to sugar growers and processors is quite large in the aggregate, hovering around $1.2 billion. Losses to households are diffused, about $10 per person per year but large for the population as a whole, in the range of $2.4–$4 billion.”

The program has been costly to the economy as well. Many U.S. companies have decided to close their U.S factories and relocate the jobs to Mexico or Canada where they can avoid paying the artificially high sugar prices. The hardest hit area has been Chicago, Illinois, which was named the nation’s “Candy Capital” in 1941 and had thousands of manufacturing jobs in the city. Beginning in 2005, three of the most well-known U.S. candy companies, Brach’s, Fannie May, and Mars Wrigley, have closed their factories in Chicago. A February 2022 AEI report noted that 17,000 to 20,000 jobs in the food processing and confectionary industries have been lost.

Few examples exist of more conspicuous public regulation for the benefit of entrenched special interests at the expense of taxpayers than the U.S. sugar program. The program should be replaced with market-oriented reforms to help consumers, food manufacturers, taxpayers, producers, and the environment. Eliminating the sugar program would save taxpayers $1.2 billion in the first year, and $6 billion over five years.

The dairy subsidy is a close second to the sugar program due to its complex tangle of subsidies and price supports. Through a series of federal Milk Marketing Orders, which are based historically on the distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to where the milk is produced, the government sets minimum prices that dairy processors must pay for Grade A milk. These vary from region to region, and milk producers are forbidden to sell their product in another region.

While taxpayers dodged the worst outcome when the 2014 Farm Bill did not include the proposed Dairy Market Stabilization Program, the conference agreement instead included a new Dairy Product Donation Program, which allows the purchase of dairy products at market prices “for donation to public and private nonprofit organizations that provide nutrition assistance to low-income populations.” The program, which was never considered in the House or Senate, would require the USDA to buy dairy goods when market prices drop below a certain threshold and continue these purchases until market prices resurface above the established threshold.

Instead, the 2014 Farm Bill instituted the dairy margin coverage (DMC) program, which provides monthly payments to dairy farmers when milk prices are low relative to an index of dairy feed prices. DMC payments milked $3.3 billion from taxpayers between 2019-2024.

The best solution for taxpayers and consumers is for milk markets to be deregulated and made to resemble other competitive industries. Eliminating the dairy subsidy would save $36.7 million in the first year and $183.5 million over five years.

Eliminate the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI)

1-Year Savings: $812 million  5-Year Savings: $4.1 billion

CMMI was established as part of the ACA to create new payment and service models that would reduce costs and improve quality of care for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It was one of the ways that the ACA supposed to be “paid for.” CMMI is a mandatory program with $10 billion allocated for each decade. But before any more money is spent, any reasonable assessment of CMMI’s ineffectiveness and cost should lead to the conclusion that it should be eliminated.

CMMI was sold as a modest experiment to test narrow pilot programs that could improve care and lower costs. Today, it functions as a backdoor for government-controlled healthcare. Unelected bureaucrats are spending billions of dollars for a trial-and-error exercise that imposes broad and often costly mandatory changes on patients and their doctors without input from Congress.

A September 2023 CBO report found that instead of saving an initially projected $2.8 billion between 2011 and 2020, CMMI cost taxpayers $5.4 billion, and it will cost another $1.3 billion through 2030.

Only six of the 50 models created between 2011 and 2020 showed enough potential to save money and improve care that they were continued. The Biden administration in December 2024 announced the cancellation of the Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design, which started in 2017 and cost $4.5 billion over 2021 and 2022, and four other models at the end of FY 2025. A July 2026 American Council for Capital Formation report found that CMMI could cost up to $8.12 billion between 2024 and 2033, and that, “under no scenario is the program able to achieve any savings for taxpayers for the 2024-2033 budget window.”

CMMI’s attempts to improve its results include the creation of a new Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model that became effective in six states on January 1, 2026. Treatments for Parkinson’s disease, sleep apnea, arthritic knees, and incontinence are on the list that will require bureaucratic “prior authorization” which will constitute another government-controlled encroachment on patient and provider choices.  

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CCAGW) WISeR case study noted that it is “another clear example of CMMI using its demonstration authority to advance novel healthcare policy changes without meaningful provider input. WISeR has sparked significant controversy due to its implementation with no formal public input, unprecedented implementation of PA through AI algorithms in original Medicare and embedding utilization controls that created new incentives to reduce or deny services. In practice, this means government bureaucrats are introducing new hurdles making it harder for patients to access certain treatments.” A September 8, 2026, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) blog post discussed the results of the organization’s Freedom of Information Act request to CMMI about the WISeR model. The records obtained by EFF revealed that WISeR has resulted in “long wait times, rampant technical failures, inappropriate denials, and harm to patients.”

CMMI has been also used to implement policies that would increase government control over healthcare and undermine innovation. On December 23, 2025, CMMI announced two new mandatory models, the Global Benchmark for Efficient Drug Pricing (GLOBE) and the Guarding U.S. Medicare Against Rising Drug Costs (GUARD), which would impose Most Favored Nation (MFN)-style price controls on Medicare Parts B and D. CCAGW’s case study on the two models noted that those prices would be based on those in countries with socialized medicine that have freeloaded off U.S. research and development and artificially reduced the cost of drugs. The case study reinforced the Council of Economic Advisers’ February 2020 report during President Trump’s first term, which found that American patients pay more for biopharmaceutical drugs because of free-riding and price controls by foreign countries, and that reducing both would increase competition and lower drug prices for American patients.  These far-reaching, mandatory models would both replace market-based competition with price controls and undermine pharmaceutical innovation.

Unfortunately, CMS released the final rule for the GLOBE model on September 30, 2026, with an effective date of November 30, 2026. Rather than implementing MFN price controls on drugs, trade deals should be leveraged to force foreign countries to end their free-riding and price controls, like the April 2, 2026, announcement of the final United States, United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland Arrangement on pharmaceutical pricing.

Adopting MFN price controls would also harm patients.  According to an August 2022 University of Chicago issue brief, price controls would increase healthcare spending by $50.8 billion over the next 20 years and lead to 135 fewer drugs, which will negatively impact 2.47 million patients. Given the agency’s abysmal track record, CMMI should not be allowed to impose MFN price controls by administrative fiat.

Some members of Congress have taken note of CMMI’s failures. On April 15, 2026, Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) introduced H.R. 8293, the Abolish the CMMI Act, which would finally eliminate CMMI.

After 15 years of failure, it is clear that CMMI will not provide any benefit to the American people. This wasteful and harmful agency should be terminated as soon as possible.

Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act

1-Year Savings: $800 million  5-Year Savings: $6.8 billion

The Davis-Bacon Act, passed in 1931, requires that contractors pay their employees the “prevailing wage” on federal projects costing more than $2,000. Davis-Bacon has been touted by labor unions and politicians as essential to ensuring fair compensation for government jobs. In reality, the “prevailing wage” tends to correspond to union wages, especially in urban areas.

This effect is no accident. Davis-Bacon was passed as part of an effort by high-skilled, high-wage, mostly white workers to keep out lower-paid, non-union, minority competition. In 1931, Rep. Miles Allgood (D-Ala.), arguing for the act’s passage, complained of “that contractor [who] has cheap colored labor which he transports … and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”

Today, Davis-Bacon continues to keep potential new entrants out of the federal contracting market, as they are unable to comply with the law’s onerous rules. This includes many small businesses led by women, people of color, and recent immigrants.

Davis-Bacon supporters have argued that hiring low-wage workers would result in shoddy work. But the federal government is aware that this is not accurate. Davis-Bacon was suspended in the aftermath of Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina to facilitate reconstruction, and the GAO reported in September 2009 that many stimulus projects were delayed for months because of onerous Davis-Bacon requirements. A January 27, 2010, Heritage Foundation study found that suspension of Davis-Bacon under the stimulus “would allow the government to build more and hire 160,000 new workers without increasing the deficit.”

Efforts to repeal Davis-Bacon have consistently failed in Congress, requiring taxpayers to shoulder the extra cost of federal construction projects and exacerbating the cronyism, waste, and unfairness that has resulted from coziness between big government and large federal contracting businesses. Davis-Bacon adds about 20 percent to the cost of each federal project. A December 2024 CBO report estimated that repealing Davis-Bacon would save $6.8 billion over five years.

Eliminate Funding for the M1A2SEP Abrams Tank Upgrade Program

1-Year Savings: $778.5 million  5-Year Savings: $3.9 billion

Over the objections of senior DOD officials, members of Congress continue to earmark funds to upgrade M1 Abrams into the M1A2SEPv3 variant, including a $58.8 million earmark in FY 2026, on top of the $740.5 million request in the base budget. On September 6, 2023, DOD announced that it intends to move on from this version of the Abrams, and instead build the M1E3, based in part on lessons learned in the fighting in Ukraine. The new tank integrates technologies designed to increase survivability and maneuverability.

Rather than the Army and prime contractor General Dynamics agreeing on how to build every sensor and communications system for the M1E3 for its entire service life, the Army chose an open system that will permit the use of different systems and software as needed in the future. As a result, the Army began to field the new tank in 2026, with full rollout occurring within three years, instead of the initial timeline of service entry by 2035 to 2040. Unfortunately, despite this success story, members of Congress continue to fund the M1A2SEPv3 via the Abrams Upgrade Program rather than fully committing to the M1E3.

Although the M1 tank plant is in Lima, Ohio, its suppliers are spread across the country, which helps to explain why the Abrams Upgrade Program still exists, contrary to all evidence that it should be eliminated. Indeed, past versions of the DOD bills, including in FYs 2016 and 2017, hinted at a parochial incentive for the program’s continuance: industrial base support. There is nothing like a jobs program disguised as a national security priority.

Unfortunately, the jobs program continued in FY 2026. By earmarking additional funding for the Abrams Upgrade Program, members of Congress have chosen to ignore the DOD’s positive

progress in fielding a new tank. The $778.5 million spent in FY 2026 will crowd out funding for the M1E3 and inevitably make upgrading the Abrams in the manner the Pentagon prefers much more costly and difficult.

Since FY 1994, there have been 48 earmarks for the M1 Abrams Upgrade Program, requested by at least 13 members of Congress, costing taxpayers $3 billion.

Eliminate the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) and the International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC)

1-Year Savings: $702.2 million  5-Year Savings: $3.5 billion

The Ex-Im Bank is an independent government agency founded in 1934 in an effort to encourage U.S. exports. In FY 2025, the Ex-Im Bank authorized more than 1,300 transactions totaling $8.7 billion in taxpayer-backed direct loans, guarantees, and export-credit insurance to private firms and foreign governments. The $8.7 billion in FY 2025 is a 163.6 percent increase from the $3.3 billion authorized in FY 2018.

Ex-Im Bank’s supporters claim that the bank does not cost anything.  By using the accounting method prescribed by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 to evaluate the bank’s cost, proponents claim the bank will save taxpayers $14 billion over the next decade.  However, a May 2014 CBO report found that when the more traditional fair value accounting method is used, Ex-Im Bank is estimated to have a 10-year cost of $2 billion. 

Proponents also state that the Ex-Im Bank makes loans that private sector lenders would not, creates jobs, and costs taxpayers nothing. Each of these statements is untrue. The largest beneficiaries of the Ex-Im Bank’s largesse are major corporations that have no trouble receiving financing from private sources. The bank has become one of the most egregious examples of corporate welfare in the U.S. It has been referred to as “Boeing’s Bank” after Boeing received 65 percent of the Ex-Im Bank’s $15.3 billion in 2010 financing. The Ex-Im Bank has also made loans to Caterpillar, Chevron, Dell, Emirates Airlines, and Halliburton, all of which borrow regularly from private lenders and are stable, profitable concerns.

On May 8, 2019, the Senate confirmed three new members of the Ex-Im Bank’s board of directors, giving it the quorum required to approve larger deals. Previously, the bank could not approve any deals over $10 million. This meant that smaller companies benefited the most from the Ex-Im between January 2016 and May 2019. Now, large corporations once again are positioned to take the lion’s share of Ex-Im’s taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The IDFC augments the Ex-Im Bank’s import insurance program by providing financing and insurance against political risk in countries where American firms invest. In doing so, the U.S. government subsidizes multinational corporations’ risky investments in unstable places where they are less likely to pay off. IDFC loans and insurance subsidies go to companies like Kimberly-Clarke, Levi-Strauss, and Magma Copper Company, which have no trouble getting private loans and insurance.

Critics of the IDFC range from the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation on the right to Corporate Welfare Watch on the left. Ending taxpayer support for both the IDFC and the Ex-Im Bank would be an essential step away from corporate welfare toward free markets and relief for taxpayers.

End the Essential Air Service (EAS)

1-Year Savings: $688 million  5-Year Savings: $3.4 billion

The EAS was created in 1978 after airline deregulation to provide taxpayer support for service in smaller communities. Intended to sunset after a decade, the EAS is now in its 48th year of operation. What was meant to be a temporary program has morphed into a funnel for subsidies to support largely empty flights that otherwise would never leave the ground.

The EAS provides subsidies to 177 rural communities in 35 states and territories. Most designated cities receive more than $100 per passenger.

A March 21, 2022, Forbes article noted that eligibility is largely based on cities where service was provided in 1978: “As a result, tiny Ogdensburg, NY with 10,000 people and Massena, NY with 12,000 people get subsidies. Yet nearby Watertown, NY, with over 25,000 people, gets no subsidies today. People in Watertown must drive the just over one-hour trip to Syracuse, NY for their flights while the much smaller subsidized cities can board at their local airport on the taxpayer’s dime.” Centers of population have changed over time, but EAS eligibility has not.

A September 19, 2009, Los Angeles Times article revealed that EAS “spends as much as thousands per passenger in remote areas” and “provides service to areas with fewer than 30 passengers a day.” Among the most absurd recipients of EAS subsidies is the Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport, tirelessly defended by the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), from which just 18 flights leave each week. Johnstown is only two hours east of Pittsburgh International Airport by car. One reason for its continued existence was revealed in a 2015 West Virginia University study which found “strong evidence that subsidies are higher in districts having congressional representation on the House Transportation Committee.”

A May 2012 Scripps Media investigation “exposed one flight between Baltimore and Hagerstown, Maryland – just about 75 miles apart – [that] was so sparse the captain allowed the only other passenger who wasn’t our producer to sit in the co-pilot’s seat,” and cited two other flights on the same route with just one passenger each. The investigative team found that, “A 19-seat plane from Cleveland to Dubois, Pennsylvania, about 180 miles east, had just one passenger as well.”

The Federal Aviation Administration funding bill that passed in February 2012 limited EAS funding recipients to airports that are more than 175 miles from a major hub and that move more than 10 passengers a day. Hagerstown was dropped from EAS in October 2019, but Johnstown still gets funding.

President Trump’s FY 2027 budget called for a $372 million cut to EAS, stating the program, “funnels taxpayer dollars to airlines to subsidize half-empty fights from airports that are within easy commuting distance from each other, while also failing to effectively provide assistance to most rural air travelers. Spending on this program is out of control, more than doubling between 2021 and 2025.” Approving that request would be helpful, but it makes much more sense to eliminate the program entirely.

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

1-Year Savings: $414 million  5-Year Savings: $2.1 billion

Created in 1965, the NEA and NEH are perfect examples of the government dabbling in fields that should be left entirely to the private sector. Efforts to reign in NEA and NEH over the past 61 years have been rebuffed in large part because special interest groups and their political allies have long fought for every drop of funding.

For example, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) helped defeat H.R. 1, the full-year continuing resolution for FY 2011, which, among other spending reductions, defunded the NEA and the NEH. On March 8, 2011, Sen. Reid described the proposed termination in a Senate floor speech as “mean-spirited,” stating that, were it not for the NEH’s federal money, the Cowboy Poetry Festival and “the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.” The festival’s promoter undermined this claim when he said only 7 percent of the festival’s funding came from the NEH and they could certainly carry on without that money. This earned Sen. Reid CAGW’s Porker of the Month in March 2011.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) identified dozens of absurd NEA and NEH expenditures in his 2016 “Wastebook: Porkemon Go,” like $206,000 for monkey puppet shows and $1.7 million for a Hologram Comedy Club. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) identified additional silly spending in his 2017 “Federal Fumbles,” like a $30,000 NEA grant for the production of Doggie Hamlet and $20,000 for an adult summer camp focusing on climate change art. The 2019 version of Sen. Lankford’s report disclosed a $50,400 NEH fellowship paid to a professor at Sonoma State University to examine “the ways Russia used its wine industry to befriend Europe during the Russian Empire and the Soviet eras,” while the 2023 version reported on a $100,000 NEH grant to bring Shakespearean plays to virtual reality.

Plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly articles, regardless of their merit or attraction, should not be forcibly financed by taxpayers. Actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them. Anything else is anathema to taxpayers.

Unfortunately, legislators doubled down on funding for the NEA and NEH in the CARES Act, providing $75 million for each. The $150 million in funding added 36.2 percent to the $414 million provided for the two entities in the FY 2024 appropriations bills. The relationship between NEA and NEH funding and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has yet to be established.

The Trump administration’s FY 2027 budget requested $29 million for NEA and $38 million for NEH, enough to wind down both entities.

Eliminate Regional Development Agencies, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Denali Commission, and the Northern Border Regional Commission.

1-Year Savings: $297 million  5-Year Savings: $1.5 billion

The federal government funds independent agencies that provide region-specific grants for infrastructure projects, economic development, and local capacity building. Each of President Trump’s budgets from FY 2018 through FY 2021 proposed the elimination of the Delta Regional Authority, the Denali Commission, and the Northern Border Regional Commission, stating that they are duplicative of other federal programs. The FY 2021 budget noted that money for the three commissions, “is set aside for special geographical designations rather than applied across the country based on objective criteria indicating local areas’ levels of distress.”

President Trump’s FY 2026 budget request again proposed zeroing out funding for those three regional commissions because it “removes an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy in an already bloated grant-making system to achieve greater efficiencies. … States and local governments are better positioned to fund and address unique regional and geographic economic development challenges.” However, it requested $14 million for the Appalachian Regional Commission, an increase of $6 million, or 75 percent, more than the FY 2024 appropriated amount.

President Trump’s FY 2027 budget requested $120 million for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a decrease of 40 percent from its FY 2026 budget of $200 million. It requested $7 million for the Denali Commission to undertake an “orderly closeout,” down 61.1 percent from its FY 2026 budget of $18 million. The budget did not request funding for the Delta Regional Authority or the Northern Border Regional Commission.

The Denali Commission, created by Congress in 1998 to build infrastructure in rural Alaska, has been targeted for elimination by multiple administrations. Former President Obama recommended eliminating funding for the commission in his FY 2012 budget, stating that Denali projects are not funded through a competitive or merit-based system, and that at least 29 other federal programs could fulfill the commission’s mandate. The commission’s IG, Mike Marsh, stated in September 2013 that “I have concluded that [my agency] is a congressional experiment that hasn’t worked out in practice. … I recommend that Congress put its money elsewhere.”

Since Alaska’s oil revenues are used to pay an annual dividend to each state resident (in 2025, Alaskans each received $1,000), an additional subsidy is hard to justify. The commission’s statutory authorization expired on October 1, 2009. It is time for the federal appropriation to disappear as well.

The Delta Regional Authority has also been frequently criticized. In addition to being targeted for elimination by the Trump administration, former President Obama’s FY 2017 version of Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings proposed a $3 million annual cut. Moreover, each of the Republican Study Committee’s budgets from FYs 2017 through 2025 called for the termination of regional commissions.

Regular readers of CAGW’s Congressional Pig Book know that these programs have long been heavily earmarked. The Appalachian Regional Commission has received 14 earmarks totaling $413.8 million since FY 1995 for projects in Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Since FY 2000, members of Congress have added 33 earmarks costing $353.9 million for the Denali Commission, including Senate appropriator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). Since FY 2003, legislators have added 18 earmarks for the Delta Regional Authority costing $177.9 million.

Eliminate Tax-Exempt Financing for Professional Sports Stadiums

1-Year Savings: $215 million  5-Year Savings: $1.1 billion

Internal Revenue Code Section 103 provides exclusions from gross income for interest earned on state and local bonds. It does not apply to private activity bonds and arbitrage bonds. While the tax break is intended to help raise capital to finance public infrastructure projects, it has also been used indirectly for professional sports stadiums and arenas owned or operated by private, for-profit enterprises.

A study published in the March 2020 National Tax Journal found that 43 of 57 (75 percent) professional stadiums constructed or substantially renovated since 2000 were financed at least in part with tax-exempt municipal bonds, resulting in an estimated $4.3 billion in lost federal tax revenue between 2000 and 2019, or an average of $215 million per year. The practice is not limited to sports. State and local governments have also used tax-advantaged bonds for private economic development projects, like an August 2024 Wyandotte County, Kansas proposal to finance a Buc-ee’s convenience store with tax-exempt public bonds.

CAGW has long documented how tax-exempt bonds can mask taxpayer subsidies for private stadium projects, including the proposed Monumental Sports & Entertainment arena in Virginia and the Washington Commanders’ proposed stadium in the District of Columbia. If professional sports facilities are worthwhile investments, team owners should finance them with private capital rather than relying on an involuntary subsidy from federal taxpayers, most of whom will never set foot in those facilities.

The use of tax-exempt bonds for sports facilities can be clarified by legislation like H.R. 2434, the bipartisan No Tax Subsidies for Stadiums Act, introduced by Reps. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.). It would amend the Internal Revenue Code to ensure that bonds used to finance professional stadiums are not treated as tax-exempt bonds.

Suspend Federal Land Purchases

1-Year Savings: $187.7 million  5-Year Savings: $938.5 million

The federal government currently owns roughly one-third of all U.S. land, including more than 80 percent of Alaska and Nevada and more than half of Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. A March 2000 CBO report stated that the National Park Service (NPS), the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management might better meet “environmental objectives such as habitat protection and access to recreation … by improving management in currently held areas rather than providing minimal management over a larger domain.”

On September 27, 2003, the GAO reported that the NPS’s maintenance backlog was more than $5 billion. For FY 2025, the NPS reported a maintenance backlog of $24 billion, more than four times the 2003 figure, and 101.7 percent higher than the $11.9 billion backlog in FY 2018. Suspending land purchases would give the NPS the opportunity to reduce the backlog and improve the condition of America’s national parks.

Eliminate the Market Access Program (MAP)

1-Year Savings: $181.4 million  5-Year Savings: $907 million

Formerly known as the Market Promotion Program, MAP is one of the federal government’s most blatant examples of corporate welfare. In FY 2026, MAP doled out $181.4 million to successful companies and conglomerates like the American Soybean Association ($6.8 million), Blue Diamond ($3.4 million), California Prune Board ($3.1 million), Cotton Council International (CCI) ($13.1 million), National Sunflower Association ($901,234), Pet Food Institute ($1.4 million), Sunkist Growers, Inc. ($1.8 million), U.S. Meat Export Federation ($14.1 million), Welch Foods, Inc. ($56,071), and the Wine Institute ($6.8 million).

Former President Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposed a 20 percent cut in MAP, but an amendment to S. 3240, the 2012 Farm Bill, offered by former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), to achieve even that limited objective was defeated in the Senate on June 20, 2012, by a vote of 30-69.

A June 13, 2012, Fox News article cited Sen. Coburn’s report on MAP, which disclosed that some of the $20 million that was given to the CCI in 2011 was used to create an Indian reality TV show in which designers created clothing made from cotton. The show was intended to promote the use of cotton generally, not necessarily cotton from the U.S. But India does not have any need for U.S. cotton, as it is a net exporter of the product and produces twice the amount of U.S. cotton growers. MAP has provided $186.1 million to CCI between FYs 2014 and 2026.

It is long past time to eliminate MAP.

Eliminate the Heritage Partnership Program (HPP)

1-Year Savings: $31 million  5-Year Savings: $155 million

The HPP supports the 62 National Heritage Areas (NHAs) created by Congress across 36 states, and funds have long been earmarked for the program. Operated through the NPS, the HPP has received 56 earmarks costing $153.4 million since FY 2001, including funding for projects like park improvements, sports complexes, health centers, water quality monitoring, bike paths, sustainable agriculture, and agricultural tourism.

Each of former President Obama’s budgets from FYs 2011 through 2017 slashed funding for NHAs. The FY 2017 version of Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings recommended trimming the budget by 55 percent, from $20 million to $9 million. Three of President Trump’s budgets from his first administration proposed eliminating the HPP entirely, saving $22 million. The FY 2021 budget noted there is no “systematic process for designating Heritage Partnership Areas or determining their effectiveness,” and made the same argument that former President Obama made in his FY 2011 budget that funding for the HPP diverted resources from core NPS responsibilities. President Trump’s FYs 2026 and 2027 budget requests again recommended eliminating all funds for the HPP.

Unfortunately, members of Congress have continuously ignored these proposed budget reductions, earmarking funding for the HPP in 10 of the last 14 years.