Federal Spending Watch is a weekly review of where federal dollars are flowing, anchored to public records. Figures below are drawn from government databases, agency announcements, and oversight reports, with links to original sources. Where a finding is preliminary or contested, it is identified as such.
The week of June 15 brought a blunt fiscal warning from the federal government’s own auditors, set against a deficit that has already crossed $1.2 trillion this fiscal year. On June 17, the Government Accountability Office released its annual report on “The Nation’s Fiscal Health,” projecting that federal debt held by the public will climb to 251 percent of gross domestic product by 2056 under a current-policy baseline, with interest costs rising toward 10 percent of GDP. GAO described the trajectory as “unsustainable” and called for “urgent and sustained action.” Days earlier, budget analysts confirmed that the Treasury had recorded a deficit of roughly $1.2 trillion through the first eight months of fiscal 2026.
For context, USAspending.gov records show total federal budgetary resources of about $15.8 trillion for fiscal 2026 to date. That figure includes carryover balances and is not annual outlays, but it is a reminder of the scale against which this week’s individual awards and waste findings should be read. Below are eight developments from the past week worth watching.
1. GAO: $186 billion in improper payments last year
In a pair of reports released June 4 and summarized in its WatchBlog, the GAO reported that federal agencies made an estimated $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025, an increase of about $24 billion from the prior year. Improper payments are disbursements that should not have been made or were made in the wrong amount; the majority were overpayments, including money sent to recipients who were ineligible for federal assistance.
The data shows the problem is concentrated. About 73 percent of reported errors occurred in just five program areas—Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program. Medicare alone accounted for roughly $57 billion and Medicaid for about $37 billion. Of the 64 programs GAO reviewed, eight reported improper payments of $5 billion or more.
GAO notes that the $186 billion estimate is incomplete: it excludes some programs known to be susceptible to errors, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which spent about $16.5 billion in fiscal 2025 without reporting an improper-payment estimate. Cumulatively, the auditors report, as much as $3 trillion has been lost to payment errors since fiscal 2003. The full report and recommendations are catalogued as GAO-26-108044.
2. SpaceX wins $4.16 billion for missile-tracking satellites
The Space Force awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion contract on May 29 to build a constellation of satellites for the Space-Based Air Moving Target Indication (SB-AMTI) program, designed to detect and track airborne targets from orbit. According to trade-press reporting confirmed by CNBC, the company is scheduled to field the constellation by 2028.
The award’s significance lies as much in market concentration as in its dollar value. Reporting indicates that, combined with a separate communications-layer award the same week, SpaceX secured roughly $6.45 billion in Space Force business in a single week. Full funding for the program remains contingent on congressional action: the Space Force’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes about $7 billion to procure SB-AMTI satellites and a further $1 billion for a related ground-moving-target effort. The pace and concentration of these space awards is a pattern that warrants continued scrutiny as the appropriations process unfolds.
3. A $9.7 billion software consolidation at the Pentagon
The Department of War—the renamed Department of Defense—awarded Dell Federal Systems a $9.7 billion, five-year blanket purchase agreement to consolidate Microsoft software, services, and licenses across the department, the Intelligence Community, and the Coast Guard. Officials described the Core Enterprise Technology Agreement as a way to negotiate at greater scale and reduce fragmented procurement.
Notably, officials said the agreement is not new funding but consolidates existing IT budgets from the services into a single, Navy-managed vehicle, and projected that it would save about $422 million annually. Claims of recurring savings from large consolidation contracts are worth tracking against actual outlays in future financial statements; the department has not yet published audited figures demonstrating the projected savings.
4. This week’s contract ledger: torpedoes, bombers, and forklifts
The Department of War posts contracts valued at $7.5 million or more each business day. The June 16 and June 17 ledgers illustrate the steady, lower-profile spending that rarely makes headlines. On June 17, General Dynamics Mission Systems received a $116.6 million modification for MK 54 lightweight torpedo sonar assembly kits, and Top Flight Aerostructures was awarded two contracts—$53.1 million for B-1 bomber trailing edges and $23.4 million for B-1 tips.
The same day, OptumHealth Care Solutions received a $25.3 million bridge modification to keep the military’s Global Nurse Advice Line running through mid-December. The June 16 ledger included a correction noting that JCB Inc. had been awarded a $255 million contract for material-handling equipment through the Defense Logistics Agency—the single largest item in the week’s daily announcements—along with a $35.7 million award for boxed meals and a $22.5 million award for F/A-18 infrared search-and-track cooling units. Department-wide obligations can be tracked on the Defense agency profile at USAspending.gov, which records roughly $1.33 trillion obligated so far in fiscal 2026, against about $1.45 trillion for all of fiscal 2025.
5. FEMA approves more than $1.1 billion in disaster aid
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced on June 10 that it had approved more than $1.1 billion for 452 Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program projects nationwide. According to the agency, the package included roughly $30 million to buy out 62 flood-damaged properties in Buncombe County, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and more than $54 million in mitigation grants for 25 projects across 13 states.
The following day, FEMA announced nearly $92 million more in Public Assistance funding for Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Disaster spending is, by design, responsive rather than budgeted, which makes it a recurring source of supplemental appropriations pressure; tracking the cadence of these approvals over a season offers an early read on whether the Disaster Relief Fund is on pace with appropriated levels.
6. USAID watchdog flags wasted family-planning supplies
A USAID Office of Inspector General management advisory issued June 11 found that approximately $8 million in U.S.-funded family-planning commodities were wasted after being moved out of climate-controlled storage, with an additional $1.7 million in supplies at risk of expiring. The advisory was produced following a request from Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Lisa Murkowski.
The advisory states that storage and freight costs exceeded $360,000 between a January 2025 stop-work order and March 2026, with monthly storage costs rising from $17,150 to $24,550. The findings stem from the administration’s decision to pause and review certain foreign-assistance contracts. As a management advisory, the document is an interim oversight product rather than a final audit, and the agency retains the opportunity to respond to its recommendations. It is included here because it is a documented, dollar-specific waste finding from a federal watchdog within the past week.
7. The fiscal 2027 spending fight takes shape
Congress completed the fiscal 2026 appropriations process only in April 2026, after a Department of Homeland Security funding lapse that ran from February 14 to April 30—the third funding interruption of the fiscal year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Enacted base discretionary funding for fiscal 2026 totaled about $1.622 trillion, including $838.7 billion for defense.
Attention has now shifted to fiscal 2027. The President’s budget request seeks roughly $1.154 trillion for defense—with an additional $350 billion sought through the reconciliation process—and about $1.814 trillion in total base discretionary funding. House appropriators advanced their defense bill through subcommittee on June 11, with a full-committee markup scheduled for June 24. These figures are requests and committee marks, not final law, and will change as the Senate weighs in. For comparison, the most recent enacted rescissions package, the Rescissions Act of 2025 (P.L. 119-28), clawed back about $9.4 billion in prior appropriations.
8. The backdrop: debt that now exceeds the economy
The week’s individual awards land against a structural backdrop that the GAO fiscal-health report laid out in stark terms. Federal debt has recently surpassed the size of the economy, and the auditors warn that, absent policy changes, interest costs alone will consume an ever-larger share of the budget. GAO’s recommended remedies are notably bipartisan in character: setting a fiscal target, addressing the Social Security and Medicare trust-fund gaps, improving tax compliance, and—directly relevant to this column—reducing fraud and improper payments.
That last recommendation closes a loop with the week’s most striking number. The $186 billion lost to improper payments in a single year is roughly the size of the entire enacted Labor-HHS-Education appropriation, and it dwarfs the savings projected from even the largest consolidation contracts. The figures suggest that the most consequential spending story is not any single award but the systems that allow tens of billions to leak each year.
Patterns to watch
Three threads from this week merit deeper investigation. First, the concentration of space procurement: a single contractor securing more than $6 billion in Space Force awards in one week, with a fiscal 2027 request that would multiply that figure, raises questions about competition and pricing that the appropriations record should be able to answer. Second, the gap between projected and realized savings: the $422 million in annual savings claimed for the Dell agreement, and similar consolidation claims, should be verified against audited outlays rather than accepted at the point of award. Third, the persistence of improper payments: with TANF and other programs still outside the official estimate, the true figure is almost certainly higher than $186 billion, and the reporting gaps GAO identified are themselves a story.
Each of these can be tracked in public records—USAspending.gov for obligations, the daily contract announcements for awards, and GAO and inspector-general reports for oversight findings. Federal Spending Watch will continue to follow the dollars.
Sources
- GAO, “The Nation’s Fiscal Health” (GAO-26-108610): gao.gov
- GAO, improper payments WatchBlog and GAO-26-108044: gao.gov/blog
- Treasury fiscal 2026 deficit (analysis): crfb.org
- Space Force / SpaceX SB-AMTI award: Breaking Defense, CNBC
- Dell Core Enterprise Technology Agreement: Breaking Defense
- Department of War daily contracts: June 16, June 17
- FEMA disaster funding: $1.1 billion, June 10; $92 million, June 11
- USAID OIG advisory (via Senate Foreign Relations Committee): foreign.senate.gov
- FY2027 appropriations status: CRFB Appropriations Watch; FY2026 funding law: Congress.gov (H.R. 7147)
- Federal obligations data: USAspending.gov (Defense), USAspending.gov