House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, defended an early-August interagency agreement between the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health after Democrats accused the Pentagon of lining up access to billions appropriated for biomedical research. “Calling routine interagency cooperation a ‘secretive attempt’ to steal NIH funding doesn’t make it true,” Cole said in a statement reported by Bloomberg Government. He said he had received assurances from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya that no money was being taken in the way Democrats described.

The fight is over power of the purse. Congress writes the checks; agencies that stretch those lines when a war burns through cash are testing how far executive bookkeeping can go without a new vote. Democrats say that is exactly what happened. The Pentagon and HHS say the paper is collaboration, not a blank check.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the House Appropriations ranking member, said in a Thursday statement that Defense officials signed an interagency agreement that could give the Pentagon access to billions meant for research at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). She said the arrangement was disclosed only after House Democrats pressed NIH officials, and she called for immediate termination.

“This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” DeLauro said. She added: “Circumventing Congress to divert money intended to help Americans who are exposed to HIV, influenza, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases—and directing those funds to the Department of Defense—is beyond the pale.”

DeLauro tied the push to Iran-war budget pressure and a pending roughly $95 billion supplemental mainly for the conflict. “It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran. But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price,” she said, according to The Hill and NOTUS.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of Senate Appropriations, issued a Sept. 3 statement saying the agreement enables the Defense Department to “potentially tap billions” from NIAID and must be terminated “in defiance of Congress.” Her office framed it as padding the Pentagon’s budget with money Congress set aside for medical research.

According to a Defense Department copy of the agreement reported by The Hill (updated Sept. 4), both agencies signed in early August. The text says that, “Supported by NIH’s scientific data, product pipelines, and translational expertise,” the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War (OASW) “will award contracts, grants, and other transactions” for therapeutics, diagnostics, and personal protective equipment. The Pentagon said the deal is a vehicle for project-by-project collaboration where missions overlap, “does not constitute any blanket transfer of funds,” and denied that it was secret. HHS told The Hill the agencies explored collaboration on medical technologies and public-health emergencies such as Ebola.

Punchbowl News reported NIAID’s budget at about $6.6 billion, with the amount that might move left unspecified and NIH potentially needing to agree to each Defense ask. That gap — a framework without a published dollar line — is why appropriators on both sides are arguing past each other: Democrats hear an end-run around the annual spending process; Republicans and the agencies hear routine joint work under existing authorities.

War spending plus quiet interagency paper is a classic stress test for congressional control of the purse. If agencies can re-route disease-research dollars toward defense priorities without a clear supplemental vote, the “project-by-project” label matters less than who actually signs the next transfer. Cole’s Bhattacharya assurances and the Pentagon’s no-blanket-transfer denial are the administration’s answer; DeLauro and Murray’s termination demand is the Democratic one. The agreement itself, dated early August and only recently aired under pressure, is now the record Congress has to police.

Sources