Susan Collins Ken Calvert Corruption & Ethics Military California Maine

Congress Spent $345 Million on Trucks the Army Called 'Excess.' The Truck Maker's Employees and PAC Have Sent Susan Collins $58,000.

The Army cancelled more orders of an armored truck it called 'excess.' Congress put $345 million back. Afterward, the truck maker's executives and PAC sent tens of thousands to Susan Collins, who chairs Senate Appropriations, and Ken Calvert, who chairs the House defense spending subcommittee.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 05, 2026

Congress Spent $345 Million on Trucks the Army Called 'Excess.' The Truck Maker's Employees and PAC Have Sent Susan Collins $58,000. — Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP, via The Intercept

In May 2025, the Army said it was done buying a certain armored truck. It had enough of them. Any more, the Army's own leader said, would be "excess."

Congress bought them anyway. The defense spending bill that passed on February 3, 2026 gave the Army $345 million for a truck it had said it did not need.

Meanwhile, money moved the other way. Since the Army tried to cancel the truck, people who work for the company that builds the truck, and the company's PAC, sent more than $58,000 to committees tied to Susan Collins — who had not gotten a dime from the company's workers in more than a decade. They sent tens of thousands more to Ken Calvert, the California Republican who writes the Pentagon's budget in the House.

That is what The Intercept reported on October 5, working from federal campaign records.

A truck the Army didn't want

The company is AM General, the maker of the Humvee. In 2023 the Army picked it to build the Humvee's heavier, armored replacement, a vehicle called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. AM General was ramping up a production line in Indiana.

Then, in May 2025, the Army's leadership announced it would stop buying more of them. The plan was part of a push to "eliminate waste and obsolete programs." More of these trucks, the Army said, would be "excess."

"Yesterday's weapons will not win tomorrow's wars," then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said, according to The Intercept.

So the people running the Army looked at this truck and said: stop.

Congress said: keep buying

Congress has a long habit of saving pricey weapons the military wants to kill. This was another one.

The House moved first. In June 2025, the House defense spending subcommittee proposed hundreds of millions for the vehicle. That subcommittee is run by Ken Calvert. He chairs the House panel that drafts the Defense Department's budget.

By the time the final bill passed in February, the Army had $345 million to buy the truck it said it didn't need. A joint House-Senate statement on the bill complained that the Army had given "inadequate supporting analysis" for cancelling it.

And the truck isn't even being delivered on time. This June, House spending writers said they wanted to look for a new maker, because AM General was 2,000 vehicles behind on orders for the Marines.

Then the checks came

Here is the timeline The Intercept laid out from Federal Election Commission records:

Before the Army tried to cancel the truck, Susan Collins was not a regular stop for AM General's people. The last time she got money from the company's employees or its owner's employees was more than a decade ago.
After the Army's "excess" announcement, AM General employees and the company PAC gave more than $58,000 to committees connected to Collins.
In the weeks after Congress passed the spending bill on February 3, donors tied to AM General gave $50,000 to Collins's fundraising committees. They included AM General's CEO, John Chadbourne, and two managing partners at KPS Capital Partners, the private-equity firm that has owned AM General since 2020. Those three all gave at the end of February or the start of March.

For Ken Calvert, the timing is the same. AM General and KPS Capital employees have given him $14,285 this election cycle, and the AM General employee PAC gave another $20,000 to his campaign and his leadership PAC — half of it in early 2025, before the Army moved to cancel the truck. Most of the AM General money came in the weeks right after the bill passed. His office did not answer The Intercept's questions.

That put Collins and Calvert in the same league as the Indiana politicians whose voters actually build the truck.

What Collins says

Collins's office says she had nothing to do with it.

"Sen. Collins was not involved in this decision. The final decision was made by the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees," her spokesperson, Phoebe Keller, told The Intercept. In the Senate, her office said, that meant Mitch McConnell and Chris Coons.

Here is the problem with that answer. Collins chairs the full Senate Appropriations Committee — the committee that the defense subcommittee belongs to. Her own campaign website brags about it. The committee "decides how federal dollars are spent each year, from national defense" on down, the site says, and her job there gives Maine "an outsized voice at the table when critical decisions are made."

Either the chair of the committee has an outsized voice in how defense dollars get spent, or she doesn't. She can't campaign on the first and answer reporters with the second.

And the money tells you who the company thought was worth paying. McConnell, the man Collins's office says made the Senate decision, got nothing from AM General or KPS employees this cycle. Coons got a single $2,500 PAC check. Collins got more than $58,000.

AM General's CEO said the company doesn't comment on donations, "all of which fully comply with FEC rules and regulations." That's true, and it's the point. Companies with federal contracts are banned from giving to candidates directly. But nothing stops their executives and their PAC from doing it.

"Members of the appropriations committees in Congress are extremely powerful. These lawmakers can steer huge sums of money to private companies," Michael Beckel of the reform group Issue One told The Intercept. "Government contractors today routinely try to leverage a broken campaign finance system to their advantage."

Not the first time

This isn't the only defense contractor story hanging over Collins this fall.

ProPublica reported that the FBI investigated an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a former defense contractor who was one of her big donors. Her office denies any pay-to-play deal and says she fully cooperated. We laid out that case — the contracts, the illegal donations, and the probe that went nowhere — last month. The Intercept says there is no sign the AM General money was part of that scheme.

But the pattern is the same. The Intercept, using OpenSecrets data, found that many of Collins's top contributors are tied to government contractors. Two defense contractors, General Dynamics and RTX, are on her list of top organizational donors. So is KPS Capital Partners, AM General's owner — the sixth-biggest organizational donor to her campaign and leadership PAC.

For Calvert, it's the same story we told in August: defense contractors sent him more than $200,000 in three months while he was writing the Pentagon's budget.

What the filings show

The Army said in May 2025 that it had enough of AM General's armored trucks and would stop buying more. Congress put $345 million back for them anyway, in a spending bill passed February 3, 2026, with Ken Calvert's House defense subcommittee moving first. AM General's employees and PAC have since given Susan Collins more than $58,000, after more than a decade of giving her nothing, with $50,000 from AM General-linked donors landing in the weeks after the bill passed. They have given Calvert more than $34,000, most of it in the same weeks. Collins says she wasn't involved, while campaigning on how much power her committee chairmanship gives her over defense spending.