U.S. Senate passes key Kennedy priorities in annual defense authorization bill

WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) applauded the U.S. Senate's vote to approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, which includes three major Kennedy-led initiatives and other Louisiana priorities.

"This critical defense authorization bill helps ensure America's military stays the best in the world at full strength-not second to anybody-and it delivers major wins for Louisianians. I'm especially proud that it also advances three of my top priorities in the Senate: ending the foolish practice of paying dead people, helping young families finally afford their first homes and forcing foreign insiders to play by the same set of rules as American investors," said Kennedy.

The Senate-passed FY26 NDAA includes:

• The Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, led by Kennedy and Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

• The Build Now Act, led by Kennedy and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

• The Holding Foreign Insiders Accountable Act, led by Kennedy and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act

The federal government sent $1.3 billion to dead people in 2023 alone. To address this problem, Kennedy first passed the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act in 2020 to allow the Social Security Administration to share the Death Master File, a record of deceased individuals, with the Treasury Department's Do Not Pay system temporarily. This bipartisan law helped recover $31 million in improper payments in just its first five months as law.

Kennedy, Peters and Wyden's Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act would stop fraud and save taxpayer money by making Kennedy's original bipartisan law permanent.

It would also allow the Treasury Department's Do Not Pay system to compare death information from the Social Security Administration with personal information from other federal entities and share it with any paying or administering agency that is authorized to use the Do Not Pay system.

The U.S. Senate also voted to pass the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act as a standalone bill in September 2025.

Build Now Act

Unaffordable home prices have driven the median age of a first-time homebuyer to a record 38 years old. To address this problem, Kennedy and Warren's Build Now Act would change homebuilding incentives within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG).

The legislation would:

• Require HUD to remove 10% of CDBG funding from cities that fail to improve their rate of homebuilding above the national median.

• Order HUD to proportionally reallocate those CDBG funds to cities that exceeded the national median rate of homebuilding. Under the Build Now Act, cities with the highest rates of growth would receive larger shares as funds are reallocated.

• Allow metropolitan areas two years to start building homes before HUD determines their level of CDBG funding.

Kennedy wrote this op-ed in The Hill about the Build Now Act.

Holding Foreign Insiders Accountable Act

Foreign investors are not held to the same insider-trading reporting standards as American investors under current law-a disparity that has allowed foreign insiders to dodge $10 billion in losses while American investors are left holding the bag.

Kennedy and Van Hollen's Holding Foreign Insiders Accountable Act would require executives of public companies based outside the United States to make electronic disclosures of trades in their company's stocks to the Securities and Exchange (SEC) within two business days. The SEC would then make that information public, as it currently does with U.S.-based firms.

Kennedy and Van Hollen authored this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal outlining their bill in April 2023. In March 2025, Kennedy penned an additional op-ed on the subject in The Hill.

Louisiana priorities

The NDAA also contains several provisions to improve Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier Parish, La., and bring defense manufacturing to Louisiana. The bill includes:

• Guardrails around any changes to the composition of Air Force Global Strike Command housed at Barksdale Air Force Base.

• Funding for the design of upgrades to the Child Development Center at Barksdale Air Force Base.

• Funding for dormitories at the weapons generation facility at Barksdale Air Force Base.

• The purchase of Ship-to-Shore Connectors made in Slidell, La.; 40-foot patrol boats made in Jeanerette, La.; and Yard, Repair, Berthing and Messing (YRBM) vessels made in Morgan City, La.

Full text of the Senate-passed FY26 NDAA is available here.