{"id":70679,"date":"2026-05-14T08:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70679\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T08:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:42:26","slug":"opinion-here-are-1-5-trillion-reasons-not-to-trust-pete-hegseths-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70679\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Here Are 1.5 Trillion Reasons Not to Trust Pete Hegseth\u2019s Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently asked Congress for a staggering amount of money: $1.5 trillion. That\u2019s a more than 40 percent increase<\/a> from last year\u2019s also incomprehensible Pentagon budget and the equivalent of the annual revenues of Amazon, Google\u2019s parent company and Apple combined.<\/p>\n

Technically, officially, Mr. Hegseth\u2019s $1.5 trillion was a budget request, and it had thousands of pages of figures and line items to go with it. But what\u2019s even more astonishing than its size is that it wasn\u2019t really a budget, not in the way you or I would think of it.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cbudget\u201d ordinarily implies picking among options, living within your means. Earlier military budgets, even the most gigantic ones, made trade-offs \u2014 canceled weapons programs, deferred maintenance, smaller fighting forces, to name a few. Mr. Hegseth\u2019s plan avoids those choices almost entirely.<\/p>\n

It would funnel more money to the traditional military contractors that Mr. Hegseth previously called out for feasting on a wasteful, bloated system. It would bankroll President Trump\u2019s weirdly retro military wish list. On top of all that, Mr. Hegseth has asked Congress for $350 billion that would come with far less oversight or accountability than the rest of the sum. And that\u2019s before the bill for the Iran war comes due; the Pentagon estimates it has cost $29 billion<\/a> so far, up from an estimate of $25 billion a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just doing an all-of-the-above approach,\u201d says Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the traditionally right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, so that they \u201cdon\u2019t have to make difficult choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

That makes Mr. Hegseth\u2019s funding request less like a budget and more like a trip to an endless casino buffet. You don\u2019t have to pick which entree you want or decide among desserts. You can have them all and in gut-busting proportions.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump announced the $1.5 trillion figure in January, on social media. \u201cThis will allow us to build the \u2018Dream Military\u2019 that we have long been entitled to,\u201d he wrote. According to The Washington Post, it wasn\u2019t part of some carefully considered budget-building exercise; it was more like a dare, one of those Trumpy attempts to reframe the debate on his own maximalist terms. White House aides and military officials reportedly scrambled<\/a> to find projects that could fit the inflated number.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it feels like that number was just kind of pulled out of thin air,\u201d Senator Mark Kelly, the former Navy pilot and frequent Hegseth foil, said<\/a> archly during the defense secretary\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hegseth responded<\/a> that \u201cthe exact amount is actually $1.535 trillion, and it was a product of a highly rigorous process throughout our department.\u201d He added<\/a> that \u201cevery budgetary item we request serves to ensure the department remains laser focused on increasing lethality and survivability of our forces, from the front lines to the factory floors.\u201d<\/p>\n

That rigor is awfully hard to detect in the budget documents Mr. Hegseth presented to Congress. There\u2019s $20 billion to provide \u201cstrategic capital\u201d to selected companies; one that has already benefited from loans is linked to<\/a> the venture capital firm 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. There\u2019s a $23 billion kitty to spend on things like battery components and other \u201ccritical capabilities required by the war fighter.\u201d A separate $46 billion \u201csovereign artificial intelligence infrastructure\u201d fund would be used to, among other things, buy up high-end chips, build data centers \u201cinside and outside the continental U.S.\u201d and provide \u201cstrategic investment\u201d in private companies.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hegseth\u2019s team says it needs flexibility in order to keep up with the head-snapping pace of change in technology but promises the budget will be \u201cfiscally responsible<\/a>.\u201d Angus King, the usually hawkish independent senator from Maine, said that a quarter of the budget was \u201cessentially a slush fund.\u201d It\u2019s a giant blank check with \u201cTrust me\u201d penciled in. So let me ask you: How much do you trust Pete Hegseth?<\/p>\n

Only a year before, Mr. Hegseth was part of an administrationwide push to cut programs in the name of government efficiency. He was praised in military circles for trimming regulations, streamlining<\/a> the Pentagon\u2019s arcane purchasing protocols and encouraging new, nimbler companies to challenge the security state\u2019s dinosaurs. One especially promising program takes the form of a series of contests: Whichever companies fly the best small, low-cost drones win Pentagon contracts to build thousands of the things. It happens in the open; you can see the leaderboard<\/a> for yourself. A British-Ukrainian partnership is beating out more politically connected rivals, proving yet again that in this new age of war, it\u2019s not always the priciest weapons that win.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the spectrum, in every way imaginable, is Lockheed Martin\u2019s $2 trillion F-35 program; Mr. Hegseth\u2019s proposal looks to spend $21 billion<\/a> on it next year, though roughly half the time, the stealth fighters are not available to fly their<\/a> missions. The proposal would continue to pour billions<\/a> into Northrop Grumman\u2019s Sentinel ICBM upgrade program, despite costs ballooning by more than 81 percent<\/a> from the original budget and a deployment schedule that\u2019s slipping into the 2030s. And it would spend billions in munitions for Raytheon\u2019s Patriot missile system, never mind the enormous inefficiency of shooting $4 million interceptors at $35,000 Iranian drones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s pet projects would get enormous infusions of cash, too. The budget would allow the Navy to get going on a new class of battleships, the first since World War II, notwithstanding the increasing vulnerability of such vessels to long-range missiles and fast-moving attacks. (The secretary of the Navy, you may recall, was recently ousted in part because of a disagreement<\/a> over these ships.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s prized Golden Dome missile defense program \u2014 a reboot of the Reagan-era \u201cStar Wars\u201d effort \u2014 has already received billions of dollars, including a contract for SpaceX, Elon Musk\u2019s rocket and satellite company. The new budget request would route nearly $18 billion<\/a> to Golden Dome.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s concerns are real, especially when it comes to keeping up with emerging technologies, and each of these efforts will have its champions in the military, in Congress or in the military industry. But picking all of these pricey programs at once is no choice at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou name it, we\u2019re investing in it,\u201d Mr. Hegseth told senators<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Hegseth is looking to supersize military spending, he and the Trump administration have taken all sorts of steps to minimize accountability. One of their early actions was to fire and replace the Pentagon\u2019s inspector general<\/a>, whose office looks into claims of fraud and abuse in military contracting. The independent office that tests whether our weapons actually work has been gutted<\/a>. At Mr. Hegseth\u2019s direction and occasional encouragement, thousands of civil servants, many of whom were responsible for keeping the military\u2019s spending in check, have walked out the Pentagon\u2019s doors.<\/p>\n

Last year about $150 billion in military spending was marked as so-called mandatory expenditures. That designation means they\u2019re subject to less congressional oversight, lower vote thresholds to clear the Senate and longer timelines in which to spend the money. This year\u2019s budget request would roughly double that total, to $350 billion. That is more than the budgets of the Departments of Energy, Justice, Labor and Health and Human Services put together.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s ask also covers major increases for several secret items. That includes an extra $10 billion more than last year for the Air Force\u2019s classified research and development funding, and another $10 billion jump for the Space Force\u2019s. It also includes huge sums for things that are not officially marked as classified, including a $54 billion program for autonomous warfare, but which are cloaked in a degree of secrecy, stating, \u201cadditional information is available at a higher classification.\u201d<\/p>\n

That secrecy, and that price tag, might make you suspicious of the spending. Mr. Hegseth assured Congress it\u2019s all on the level. He testified last month that the $54 billion autonomous warfare program was critical. Then he paused. \u201cJay\u201d \u2014 Jay Hurst, the Pentagon comptroller \u2014 \u201cjust slid me a piece of paper,\u201d Mr. Hegseth continued. \u201cIf you add it all up, it could be closer to $74 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re spending this much, what\u2019s $20 billion one way or the other?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The top line ask, that the military needs a 40% budget increase when it\u2019s already more than the rest of the world combined, is obviously false. The details list a number of things that shouldn\u2019t be part of military spending at all, because they\u2019re part of the domestic economy, not our military.Beyond that, I don\u2019t trust Hegseth to intelligently spend a normal military budget. He\u2019s repeatedly demonstrated he has no real understanding of what strategic military goals even are. He seems to think killing people is the goal in itself, and his rhetoric of \u201clethality\u201d reflects this.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Noah Shachtman<\/p>\n

Opinion contributing writer<\/p>\n

@Gus That\u2019s a good point \u2014 one I almost put in the piece. $1.5 trillion is (very roughly) the equivalent of what the rest of the world spends on defense, combined. It\u2019s ironic. Trump and Hegseth have talked again and again about NATO allies paying their fair share. Now they\u2019re proposing this huge increase in American spending, as well.<\/p>\n

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