Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Fact check: Which government agencies will see the largest percentage increase in funding from the $1.5T spending bill?
Executive Summary
The available analyses do not converge on a single agency as the clear winner; multiple reviews point to national security and defense-related accounts — including Military Construction, VA, and Homeland Security — seeing some of the largest percentage increases, while other breakdowns highlight large dollar increases for Health and Human Services and Department of Energy programs [1] [2] [3]. Partisan statements about the $1.5 trillion package offer criticism but supply no clear program-by-program percentage table, so the most reliable indicator comes from the Congressional Budget Office and appropriations-level summaries that show sectoral percentage gains differing from raw dollar increases [4] [1].
1. Who’s Claiming Big Percentage Gains — A CBO Snapshot That Demands Attention
The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, identifies Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security as showing the largest percentage increases among appropriations subcommittees, with reported increases around 14.1% and 12.4% respectively. That outcome is a percentage story: these accounts start from smaller bases than the enormous Defense Department topline, so a comparatively modest dollar bump translates into a larger percent change [1]. The CBO tables are the most methodologically transparent source in the packet because they present baseline totals and percent changes together; when asking “largest percentage increase,” percent-change comparisons from CBO are the most directly relevant metric [1].
2. Dollars vs. Percentages — Why competing analyses point to different winners
An analysis framing winners by net dollars identifies Health and Human Services (+$48.15 billion) and sector bundles labeled National Security, Technology, and Industrial Base (+$33.9 billion) as major beneficiaries, and flags new grant authorities such as a $10 billion State Border Security Reinforcement Grant Fund [2]. Those dollar-focused findings conflict with the CBO percent-ranking because large dollar increases to big agencies do not necessarily create the largest percentage swings. A $48 billion uplift to HHS is substantial in absolute terms, but relative to HHS’s baseline it produces a smaller percentage increase than a smaller absolute increase to a much smaller appropriations subcommittee [2] [1].
3. Defense and Military Construction: big absolute increases and notable percent gains
Separate budget documents and summaries show substantial absolute increases for defense — one review cites roughly a $113.3 billion increase in the Department of Defense in a proposed 2026 budget context, though that figure is not a line-by-line statement of the $1.5 trillion package [5]. The CBO’s FY25 continuing-appropriations analysis nonetheless shows Military Construction and related defense-adjacent accounts among the largest percentage winners, reflecting both targeted new spending and the way smaller program baselines amplify percent changes [1] [5]. This dual pattern explains why defense shows up in both dollar-focused and percentage-focused accounts, though the precise ranking depends on which baseline and time frame are used [1] [5].
4. Energy, Science, and Health get headline dollar boosts but not necessarily top percent changes
Appropriations summaries for energy and science programs list significant allocations — for example, Energy and Water Development appropriations and Department of Energy non-defense lines totaling tens of billions and explicit amounts for the Office of Science and renewable programs [3] [6]. Those are meaningful in programmatic terms, and they matter to research, clean energy, and nuclear security stakeholders, but when expressed as percent increases these large-dollar allocations to already-large departments often rank below smaller subcommittee increases that show higher percentage gains [3] [6] [1]. The distinction matters for interpreting “largest increase”: public attention to big dollars can obscure that smaller agencies may see the highest proportional boosts.
5. Political messaging complicates the arithmetic — partisan critiques add noise, not clarity
Partisan press releases attacking the $1.5 trillion measure emphasize procedural grievances and accuse the package of extraneous policy riders, but these critiques provide little empirical, line-item evidence about percentage winners; they are persuasive rhetoric rather than budget breakdowns [4] [7]. Analysts using different framings — some highlighting absolute grant flows to states and localities, others using CBO percent-change tables — are not necessarily contradicting the data so much as choosing different metrics. To resolve which agencies truly saw the largest percentage increases, rely on the CBO or appropriations subcommittee tables that list baselines and percent changes explicitly [1] [2].
6. Bottom line and practical next steps for verification
The most defensible answer is that Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security show the largest percentage increases in the most transparent government estimate available (CBO), while Health and Human Services and several energy and defense programs receive large absolute dollar increases in other analyses [1] [2] [3]. For a precise agency-by-agency percent ranking, consult the CBO Table 1 and the appropriations subcommittee spreadsheets cited above; they provide the baseline totals and percent-change calculations needed to settle the question definitively [1] [2].