Sponsor
Rick Crawford
Representative · R-AR
Representative · R-AR
The bill secures funding and strengthens certain intelligence capabilities and internal controls while expanding classified authorities and reporting regimes that boost executive flexibility but reduce public transparency and raise civil‑liberties, cost, and oversight concerns.
Federal intelligence personnel, retirees, and related programs get secured FY2026 funding and specified baselines (IC operations, ICMA management funds, CIA retirement, and funded pay/benefit increases), reducing risk of benefit shortfalls and interruptions to intelligence operations.
U.S. national-security capabilities are strengthened through mandated AI/security playbooks and metrics, designated senior biotech officials, authorized UAS countermeasures for high-risk federal sites, and new PRC-focused intelligence assessments, improving preparedness against technological and foreign threats.
Congressional intelligence committees (and in some cases the President) receive clearer, consolidated reporting, budget summaries, and notification requirements (e.g., IC counternarcotics budget summary, annual disclosures, playbook reports, post-closure notices), improving oversight and legislative visibility into intelligence spending and activities.
The bill reduces public transparency and weakens privacy safeguards by expanding classified funding schedules and allocations, narrowing permissible disclosures, repealing certain statutory reporting/privacy provisions, and permitting broader use/retention of signal/content data — decreasing public accountability and increasing civil‑liberties risks.
Authority and decision-making are concentrated in the executive branch (e.g., classified distribution authority, shortened notice/approval windows for large agreements), and thresholds for congressional review are reduced, which may curtail congressional scrutiny and shift procurement/control away from oversight bodies.
Taxpayers face increased federal costs from multiple new or explicit appropriations and authorized spending (CIA retirement funding, supplemental pay increases, new staffing/assessments and OSINT protections), which could raise deficits absent offsets.
Based on analysis of 20 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes FY2026 intelligence funding, creates a National Counterintelligence Center, reforms OSINT, requires China net assessments, updates reporting and personnel rules, and sets acquisition limits.
Official title: To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2026 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 8, 2025 by Rick Crawford · Last progress September 8, 2025
Authorizes FY2026 appropriations for U.S. intelligence and intelligence-related activities, sets rules for classified funding disclosure, and provides specific funding lines including the Intelligence Community Management Account and the CIA retirement fund. The bill creates new statutory authorities and organizational changes for counterintelligence and open‑source intelligence, requires comparative assessments of the People’s Republic of China, updates reporting and notification rules for certain intelligence activities, and adds personnel protections forbidding conditioning positive actions on political or ideological activism. It also revises delegation limits for large National Reconnaissance Office transactions, requires CIA guidance on "novel and significant expenditures," provides limited authority to counter unmanned aircraft over designated facilities, and establishes deadlines for several deliverables (many within 60–180 days of enactment).