The president has released his fiscal year 2027 budget request — and buried inside the rhetoric about "historic paradigm shifts" and the end of "fiscal futility" is a $1.5 trillion Pentagon spending request. A 44% increase in a single year. And that's before the Iran War supplemental reportedly in the pipeline.

TCS President Steve Ellis brings in national security analyst Gabe Murphy and Director of Research and Policy Josh Sewell to cut through the numbers: what the administration is actually proposing, what it would cost, and what it would mean for the programs everyday Americans depend on. The budget calls it discipline. Budget Watchdog AF is going to show you the math.

Taxpayers for Common Sense doesn't just watch Congress — sometimes it sits at the witness table. Last week TCS President Steve Ellis testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance on flood insurance, repetitive loss properties, and mitigation. With reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program on the horizon, we take you inside the hearing room to hear the case he made to lawmakers: the NFIP is $40 billion in the hole, we know which properties keep flooding, we know mitigation works, and the only thing missing is the will to act.

Two weeks into the U.S. military campaign against Iran — launched without congressional authorization — the costs are staggering. Estimates put taxpayer exposure at up to $28 billion already, with no clear end in sight. TCS President Steve Ellis sits down with TCS policy analyst Gabe Murphy to break down what we know: the human toll, the daily cost of operations, the shifting justifications from the White House, and what Congress has — and hasn't — done about it. From the narrow defeat of War Powers resolutions in both chambers to the administration's reported request for $50 billion in supplemental war funding, Ellis and Murphy examine whether Congress still has the tools to reassert its constitutional war powers authority — and the political will to use them.