Swamp’s New Draft Defense Bill Would Open Up Billion-Dollar Taxpayer Purse For Foreign Countries

A newly proposed draft defense bill signals Congress has no plans to slow down the flow of American tax dollars to foreign countries.

The 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), unveiled by Republican House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and Democratic Ranking Member Adam Smith, would allow for the flow of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer dollars to Iraq, Syria’s formerly al-Qaeda-linked regime, NATO and the Israeli government. It’s unclear whether the authorization will pass in its current form, as it still needs to clear the committee’s scheduled June markup and overcome other legislative hurdles.

The Office of Management and Budget, the House Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee Democrats, the Department of War and the Israeli Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Where Your Money Would Go

Israel would be the biggest winner in the proposed 2027 NDAA, with $670 million in potential outlays that would benefit Tel Aviv. The final enacted NDAA from 2026 contained roughly $500 million for Israel.

That $370 million total includes $20 million for the Iron Dome, $300 million for Israeli Cooperative Programs, $150 million for Arrow 3 Upper Tier Systems, $100 million for the Israel Counter UXS Program and $100 million for Israel Subterranean Cooperation.

Notably, the U.S. is already trying to build its own version of the Iron Dome at home. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a U.S. national missile defense system broadly consistent with Trump’s “Iron Dome for America” order would cost about $1.2 trillion.

Up to $50 million would be set aside for Emerging Tech Cooperation, although it is unclear if this line item is direct aid to Israel.

An estimated $298 billion in aid has been sent to Israel between 1946 and 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service, citing State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development data as of January 2025.

When Americans were asked in a recent survey about military aid to Israel, 40% said they would like to decrease aid, 27% said they would like to keep military aid at the same level and 11% said they would like to increase military aid, according to an April poll from YouGov and The Economist. The poll surveyed roughly 1700 U.S. adult citizens with a 3.3% margin of error.

The proposed authorization also includes $604 million for the NATO Security Investment Program and nearly $13 million for NATO research and development, even as the Trump administration pushes for NATO members to pick up more of the tab for their own defense.

“32 NATO countries committed to spending 5 percent of their GDP on defense, on actually investing in the NATO alliance [at the request of Trump],” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during a news conference on June 26, 2025. “What President Trump accomplished in NATO yesterday was game changing and historic, a shift in burden sharing to the — to European responsibility in NATO that most would have said was impossible at the beginning of his term.”

The United States remained NATO’s dominant defense spender at an estimated $980 billion in 2025, compared with $92.8 billion for the United Kingdom and $68.9 billion for France, while the smallest spenders included Montenegro at $188 million, North Macedonia at $402 million and Albania at $570 million, according to estimates from the Atlantic Council.

NATO continues to fund the Russia-Ukraine war, while the United States has committed more than $133.9 billion in defense articles and services to Ukraine from fiscal 2022 to the first quarter of 2025 under Presidential Drawdown Authority, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and Foreign Military Financing, according to Ukraine Oversight, the U.S. government’s oversight site for the Ukraine response.

The full Russian invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022; however, the conflict began much earlier on Feb. 27, 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed Kyiv’s request for American equipment Wednesday, asking the White House and Congress for anti-ballistic missiles as Russia intensifies strikes on Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.

The proposed bill also contains a line item titled the “Cooperative Threat Reduction Account” worth $221 million. Reducing threats from weapons of mass destruction, usually overseas and with foreign partners, is one of the program’s aims, according to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Another obscure expense rolled into the proposed NDAA is $115.3 million for “Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Aid.” The Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid account funds Pentagon soft power in foreign countries, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The program allows U.S. commanders to buy “positive public relations and goodwill toward DOD,” according to the Government Accountability Office.

The authorization has formal bipartisan backing from both Rogers and Democratic ranking member Adam Smith.

Another $253 million line item to train and equip counterterrorist forces in Iraq and Syria is included in the 2027 NDAA.

Syria’s former government, led by Bashar Assad, was recently overthrown and replaced by current Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharraa. Al-Sharraa’s movement, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, split from al-Qaeda in 2017, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. military launched a campaign against military targets that allegedly housed chemical weapons in Syria during the first Trump administration. Critics of the campaign have likened the actions to a regime change effort.

“Bombing chemical sites would attach U.S. prestige and credibility to the overthrow of Assad,” Brookings reported on Aug. 27, 2013.

Despite al-Sharraa’s former ties to Al-Qaeda, which is the same organization that actively fought U.S. and coalition forces during the Iraq War and perpetrated the 9/11 attacks,  President Trump invited him to the White House on Nov. 11, 2025.

The U.S. spent more than $3 trillion in the Iraq Conflict, The Washington Post reported. A total of 4,493 U.S. troops were killed, and 32,291 were wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn, according to Department of War casualty figures.

At least 134,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by war violence after the 2003 U.S. invasion, though the true number is likely higher because many deaths were unreported or unrecorded, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

“The United States supports a Syria that is stable, unified, and at peace with its neighbors, as well as a Syria that denies safe haven to terrorist organizations and ensures the security of all minority groups,” a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Department is reviewing our remaining terrorist designations related to HTS and Syria, in accordance with the President’s promise to deliver sanctions relief to Syria.”

The fresh foreign spending is being pushed as the U.S. engages in an armed conflict in Iran, with the war’s tab climbing into the billions.

“And so now we think it [spending on the Iran War] is closer to 29 [billion dollars],” Department of War Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Jules W. Hurst III said during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on May 12.

The war has already yielded benefits for the Syrian regime, as it cashes in on countries looking to route oil by land amid Strait of Hormuz traffic practically grinding to a standstill, The New York Times reported.