Exclusive: House Republicans Want to Make Military Price Gouging Worse

Deep in the 2025 defense spending bill is wording that would make it easier for the military-industrial complex to price gouge the federal government, and price gouge taxpayers.

By PJ Evans, More Perfect Union

Hidden deep within the 344 pages of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are two sections that could make it easier for military contractors to price gouge the Pentagon and U.S. taxpayers. 

Some previously reported examples of egregious price gouging by military contractors include $14,000 toilet seats, $52,000 trash cans, $1,300 cups, $50,000 radio filters, and $400,000 missiles that used to cost $25,000.

These prices have generated public outrage, but instead of reining in price manipulation, the new defense spending bill drafted by House Republicans would expand the number of items susceptible to price gouging and lock in their price increases for years to come.

"This language looks like it was written by industry,” said Julia Gledhill, a Pentagon spending researcher at the Stimson Center, an international policy and defense think tank. “It's just bad policy. I mean, it's designed to conceal their costs so that they can make outrageous profits."

Two sections of the 2025 NDAA, released this week by the House Armed Services Committee, are particularly concerning. The first section is 811, which Gledhill said substantially expands what is considered a “commercial” item, “which is one of the main ways that contractors have successfully lobbied Congress to increase their ability to price gouge over the past 20, 30 years.”

Typically, items are defined as commercial if they’re also sold to the general public for non-governmental purposes, like standard computers or supplies. For these items, the government has less power to demand specific cost and pricing data from contractors, but in theory, commercial market pressure means the government ends up paying a fair price.

“Contractors want to expand the commercial item definition so that they don't have to give their cost data because they don't want us to see their profits, which are ridiculous,” Gledhill added. “There's no requirement for them to even be sold on the public marketplace. It's laughable and it's really an insult to those of us who have to pay for it,” Gledhill said. 

Gledhill pointed to the C130J Super Hercules military transport aircraft built by Lockheed Martin as an example of this broken system. “It's considered ‘commercial’ and it's never been sold on the public marketplace…and I think is really indicative of just how expansive the commercial definition is and how Section 811 would further expand that definition artificially.”

The second section, Section 812, will make it easier for military contractors to lock in the cost of weapons, items, and services that have been grossly inflated over the last few years. The historically high prices of toilet seats and weapons of war would be locked in even if the cost to produce them came down in the future.

"They're like, well, the historic prices are fine. We can work from that moving forward,” Gledhill said. “Logically it doesn't really make much sense either, because if something is in fact commercial, it's competitively priced. So prices change because of market forces… This is really just designed for industry and I suspect that it was in fact written by contractors," Gledhill added.

So, what’s next?

There’s a scheduled markup of the NDAA on May 22, where legislators can debate sections of the bill and try to tweak or remove them entirely. But amending the bill is a difficult task. "They don't have a lot of time to debate every single provision. And so it ends up being a bit of a dumpster fire... the fact that this language is in the base text is really terrible,” Gledhill said. “It's just really hard to get bad language out. It's much easier to put good stuff in once it's in the bill.”

In addition to the fact that there are hundreds of amendments to consider, many members of Congress are in the pocket of these military contractors. Last year, contractors spent $137 million lobbying Congress, and they’ve already spent $37 million this year. In addition to buying off politicians, hundreds of former government officials now work for the top military contractors.

We’ll be watching and report back.

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