Weekly Spotlight: Congress Passing the Buck(s)
Congress has repeatedly failed to exercise its war powers against this unauthorized campaign — but make no mistake; Congress isn’t powerless.
POGO TESTIFIES
Corruption, competition, and contracts take center stage on Capitol Hill
We are always in Washington advocating for you and for commonsense reforms because, as you know, change can’t happen unless we take your concerns directly to people with the power to fix them. On Wednesday, two POGO experts spoke in front of members of Congress about corruption in government spending.
POGO’s Faith Williams, testifying before the House Committee on Natural Resources, argued for stronger guardrails to protect taxpayer money, prevent corruption, and promote healthy competition in the government’s procurement of critical minerals.
- “In this administration’s zeal to invest in mining companies, the government has created the potential for even greater costs to taxpayers by failing to put the necessary transparency and oversight guardrails in place — or even, at times, by removing the guardrails that once did exist,” said Williams.
- OVERSIGHT UNDER SIEGE: A recent executive order limited Congress’s ability to scrutinize critical minerals deals, and agencies involved in securing critical minerals were among those that saw their inspectors general illegally fired last year. When oversight is decimated beneath the guise of efficiency, hidden corruption festers. We won’t look away.
POGO’s Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, in a shadow hearing before Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, provided a laundry list of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contracting scandals — drawing on the work of POGO Investigates — and a to-do list of solutions to cut down on waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption at the agency. “Periodically, a series of scandals, or one especially provocative one, will spur responsive action from Congress and from the executive branch itself,” testified Hedtler-Gaudette. “We should view this moment, and these scandals at DHS, as that kind of opportunity. Given the seriousness and life-and-death consequences of what DHS does, especially in the contexts of immigration enforcement and protection of the homeland, it is critical to ensure the integrity and efficacy of decisions made at the agency.”
- THE INVESTIGATIONS BEHIND THE TESTIMONY: POGO Investigates has uncovered multiple scandals and potential conflicts of interest at DHS, from a luxury jet leased from a firm linked to a political donor to the clients of a well-connected lobbying firm winning contracts without competition.
WAR POWERS
Congress trying to pass the buck?
A group of Republican senators seems poised to stuff $200 billion or more in Iran war funding into yet another bloated reconciliation bill. Congress has repeatedly failed to exercise its war powers against this unauthorized campaign — but make no mistake; Congress isn’t powerless.
If both chambers pass wartime funding, your representatives won't just be handing over billions in tax dollars. They’ll be surrendering their best remaining leverage to stop an illegal war — and tacitly endorsing it. Every “yea” vote is a rubber stamp on presidential overreach, and every vote will be remembered when this illegal war faces its reckoning.
- MORE MONEY, SAME PROBLEMS: The Pentagon has already allotted more than $1.4 trillion in budgetary resources for fiscal year 2026, and the reported request of an additional $200 billion raises serious questions as to why the highest-funded military in the world is running out of resources so quickly. It suggests wasteful spending and poor allocation of resources at best, and at worst, an abuse of your tax dollars that has left our service members insufficiently equipped and less safe.
- TROOPS ON THE GROUND? “The sheer lack of strategic forethought that [the administration] put into this shows you how little they care about the safety and considerations of our armed service members,” said POGO Senior Defense Analyst Virginia Burger inResponsible Statecraft.
- PROPHETS OR INSIDER PROFITS? Suspicious bets on prediction markets such as Polymarket are raising concerns from crypto experts that people with “insider knowledge” may be profiting off of Trump administration actions surrounding the war in Iran. If true, this represents a brazen abuse of power by those with access to incredibly sensitive, high-stakes information. We cannot allow the relative newness of prediction markets to serve as a shield for something so nakedly corrupt and dangerous.
OVERSIGHT AT DHS
ICE on the runway
Amid a partial government shutdown that had Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees at a “breaking point” as they approached three missed paychecks and had fliers facing major disruptions, the White House deployed ICE agents to at least 14 airports across the country. The agents will reportedly not be assigned to specialized security tasks for which they are not trained, but their presence does not solve the TSA shortage and does have an intimidating effect on travelers. After more than 40 days, the Senate passed a funding package to fund DHS (with ICE and Border Patrol excluded). But the House rejected that measure, extending the DHS shutdown.
Despite more ICE funding being at the center of the impasse that shut down the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the president continues to deploy ICE as his personal police force. It’s clear that the most expensive U.S. law enforcement agency — whose budget has increased by a factor of 14 times in a single decade — is not underfunded, but rather has become so overfunded that it can send upwards of 150 agents to stand around at airports. You deserve a government that works expediently to fund the agencies that keep you safe and reform those that have failed to curtail constitutional abuses.
- MULLIN CONFIRMED: After a 54-45 confirmation vote in the Senate, Markwayne Mullin has been sworn in as the new DHS secretary. Your public pressure helped lead to former Secretary Kristi Noem facing accountability and removal after several documented abuses of power during her tenure. We hope Mullin heard you, too.
- MULLIN’S MISSION: “Serving the Constitution — and as a result, serving the people — is the most fundamental aspect of any government official’s job, and we need a leader at DHS that prioritizes our safety and the rule of law above all else.” — Read the full statement from POGO’s David Janovsky.
SURVEILLANCE STATE
Fixing FISA once and for all
Data brokers have built a multibillion-dollar industry selling your personal data — and federal agencies are among their biggest customers. A loophole lets them buy it without a warrant. It’s a constitutional workaround, and it needs to stop.
