News & Articles

“In America, nothing – and I mean nothing – seems capable of reversing massive military spending and incessant warfare.” William Astore, a retired USAF Lt. Colonel, historian, author and commentator on military issues.

Pentagon spending for fiscal year 2026 (Oct. 1, 2025 to Sept. 30, 2026) is projected to be $961.6 billion. This is an 8.1% increase more than FY2025.

I say “projected” because with federal spending no one knows what the totals will be until after the fact. The dollars budgeted may not match the amounts authorized by Congress (in appropriation bills) or the actual amounts spent.

This is especially true with Pentagon spending because their accounting is so sloppy that the department has never passed the required annual audits.

But as William Astore points out, you can bet the farm it will be going up. As proof, Trump is already calling for increasing the FY 2027 Pentagon spending by 50% to $1.5 trillion.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, estimates this would increase “defense spending by $5 trillion through 2035 adding $5.8 trillion to the national debt when interest is included.”

In addition total “national security” spending is much higher than the Pentagon figures stated in the press. This massive spending is riddled with waste, lack of accountability and unnecessary expenditures.
Plus it is not necessary for an adequate defense of the country. This is not just my opinion. Many experts from across the political spectrum have similar views.

In total the U.S. is already spending more than $1.5 trillion per year on “defense,” as Ben Freeman, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has written. He says, “The fact is that most Americans – and even most foreign policy wonks – grossly undercount the amount of money our government spends on the national security state” (“Trump: We got a $1.5 trillion military budget. He’s (kinda) right.” on the Quincy Institute website).

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars outside of the Pentagon’s budget” spent on national security according to Winslow Wheeler, a federal budget expert who worked for decades with the General

Accounting Office and the Center for Defense Information.

He says spending by the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, the State Department, foreign activities of the FBI, military pensions and health care, the Selective Service (draft) and related interest on the debt are not reflected in the Pentagon’s discretionary budget numbers.

Mr. Wheeler says about FY2024, “All those activities I’ve just described come to 21% of all federal spending...add all of that up together and you get $1.767 trillion” in total national security spending (“Our Real National Security Budget,” a Substack post by journalist  Andrew Cockburn).

In addition the Pentagon often gets “supplemental appropriations” for war funding. Trump has recently requested $200 billion to fund the war with Iran. Another example is the Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) spending. OCO began as post 9/11 “emergency” funding. OCO funded $1,8 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2019. Originally supplemental, OCO became a “slush fund,” averaging $116 billion annually by 2018, to circumvent required budget caps (numbers from a Google AI summary).

Winslow Wheeler says budget caps don’t apply to OCO money which is, “...not just for the wars...[but] lots of billions for goodies for everybody...all part of the hocus pocus...” of federal budgets.

“Such a large increase is unnecessary on national security grounds...current levels of defense spending are more than adequate to meet key U.S. national security requirements, and exceed what would be needed were the United States to adopt a more restrained approach to its security.”

This is the conclusion of Steven Kosiak, another federal budget expert and researcher at several policy think tanks (“The Fiscal Implications of a Major Increase in U.S. Military Spending,” the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft).

Accountability for military spending is nonexistent.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace tells us, “The sheer size of the military establishment and the habit of equating spending on it with patriotism make both sound management and serious oversight of defense expenditures rare” (“America’s Indefensible Defense Budget” on the Carnegie Endowment’s website).

“No amount of money will resolve issues that are ultimately matters of strategic overreach...” writes Julia Gledhill, a researcher for the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank. “Inflating the Pentagon budget appears to be an end itself rather than a means to building an effective national defense. The military is not, in fact, the best, or the only way, for the United States to address national security threats” (“The Ugly Truth about the Permanent War Economy” on the Stimson Center website).

“Instead of cheering on the huge proposed increase for the Pentagon, Congress should be asking tough questions on exactly what the new spending is likely to achieve...“ says William Hartung, a political scientist and author focusing on the military spending. Mr. Hartung continues, “The Pentagon doesn’t need more spending, it needs more spending discipline. Even more importantly, we need a new strategy that doesn’t involve a quest to be able to fight anywhere in the world on short notice... [we need] a strategy that merges military strength, smart diplomacy and widespread economic engagement...” (“Spending $1.5 Trillion on the Pentagon Will Make America Weaker,” on the Economists for Peace and Security website).

William Astore has written that our the military spending could by cut by 50%, without hurting our national security. This could be accomplished by focusing on actual defense rather than offensively projecting power, seeking global dominance and engaging in unnecessary wars (I wrote about this in “Taxes and endless military spending,” The Reader, April 13, 2023).

Mr. Kosiak also writes, “But worse than simply being unnecessary, such a large increase in defense spending would have severely negative consequences for U.S. security over the long run” because  increases in defense spending “would inevitably add to the...growing federal debt – specifically the danger such a debt poses to America’s economy and, ultimately, its ability to compete with China.”

Ms. Gledhill sums up the foolishness of endless increases in military spending, “A military build-up would further entrench generations of Americans in the permanent war economy, which already does little to safeguard their security, much less their collective prosperity.”

The U.S. accounts for half of the world’s $2.6 trillion military spending. Clearly we need better spending priorities and a demilitarized defense strategy.