Pete Hegseth Can't Explain Why America Needs a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget
Sen. Mark Kelly says it "feels like that number was just kind of pulled out of thin air."
With the Trump administration asking Congress for a staggering increase in military spending, you might expect Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to have a clear vision for how all that extra taxpayer money will be used.
That does not seem to be the case. At this week's appropriations hearings in the House and Senate, Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials offered few concrete answers for why the Pentagon needs $1.5 trillion next year or what huge new threats would justify that spending.
Probably the best illustration of the vapidity of the Pentagon's massive budget request comes from the department's own press release following this week's hearings, during which the media was alerted to pearls of Hegseth's wisdom like: "[This] budget will ensure the United States continues to maintain the world's most powerful and capable military, as we grapple with a complex threat environment across multiple theaters."
And: "We are firing up the American economic engine, and at every level of our defense industrial base. Every policy we pursue, every 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."
This is budgeting by sound bite. It's a weird mashup of corporate jargon and campaign trail blather in place of anything that might resemble a plan for how to spend $1.5 trillion. And it makes me wonder: Has Hegseth ever used the word "focused" without first saying "laser"?
Sen. Mark Kelly (D–Ariz.), the former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who has repeatedly clashed with Hegseth, focused (laser-like, you might say) on this problem during Wednesday's hearing.
"If you're putting together a budget, you'd come up with, 'These are the problems we're trying to solve. This is the capability we need. These are the systems we have to buy,'" Kelly said.
The Pentagon's budget plan, however, does no such thing. Instead of specifics, it calls for spending $23 billion on "critical capabilities required by the war fighter," and another $46 billion for a "sovereign artificial intelligence infrastructure" fund that would, among other things, fund "strategic investment" in private companies.
Which companies? What capabilities? How did these spending totals get decided?
"It feels like that number was just kind of pulled out of thin air," Kelly concluded.
It's also a number that deserves some additional context. At $1.5 trillion, the Pentagon's budget proposal exceeds every military budget in American history, when adjusted for inflation. It's more than was spent at the height of World War II and during the Cold War. It would be a 45 percent increase over the current budget level, which was 18 percent higher than in 2024.
As Taxpayers for Common Sense noted this week, the likely addition of a supplemental budget to fund the war in Iran means total American military spending could double in the space of just two years.
Yes, that's right. The $1.5 trillion budget does not include the cost of the ongoing war with Iran.
If the Pentagon truly needs such a massive budget next year, then Hegseth and other Trump administration officials should have to explain what threat the country is facing, says Benjamin Freeman, co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine and a project director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Even more confusing, Freeman says, is that the budget hearings were happening against the backdrop of Hegseth's repeated claims that the U.S. military has crushed Iran and during President Donald Trump's visit to China. Just this week, the president called Chinese President Xi Jinping a "friend." Both developments would seem to suggest the U.S. does not face any major geopolitical threats.
"If you're saying we need a $1.5 trillion budget because of your friend, I think you've got even more explaining to do," Freeman tells Reason. "Unfortunately, we just got none of that at the hearings this week."
The Pentagon's spending is famously opaque and it has never successfully passed an audit. Even by that standard, however, the new budget request is an exercise in uncertainty.
Procedurally, the Trump administration is asking Congress to approve $1.15 trillion through the usual appropriations process and to pass the other $350 billion in funding via reconciliation—which means that spending could be approved with a simple majority in the Senate and would be subject to less scrutiny from lawmakers.
That's not sitting well with some members of the chamber. During Wednesday's hearing, Sen. Angus King (I–Maine) said the "two-part budget" means "a quarter of the budget is essentially a slush fund."
A huge chunk of the reconciliation portion of the military budget would be directed toward the development of the so-called "Golden Dome" missile defense shield. The Pentagon is asking for about $17 billion to start developing the shield—but that's just a start, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the final price tag will be around $1.2 trillion. Other estimates say it will cost more than $3 trillion.
But will the "Golden Dome" actually protect America from possible nuclear annihilation? Probably not.
That's a nice metaphor for the entire $1.5 trillion budget proposal, which seems primarily concerned with funneling as much money as possible to military-industrial contractors, regardless of feasibility, all wrapped up in vague hoo-rah-isms about "lethality."
Proponents of giving more money to the Pentagon like to point out that the U.S. spent upwards of 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the military during the Cold War and that, measured in that way, Trump's $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget equates to only about 5 percent of America's total economic output.
That's a "fool's argument," says Freeman, because it sets an arbitrary line, one that automatically rises as the economy grows, rather than a realistic assessment of what the military should be doing.
"You shouldn't determine how much you spend on the military by how big your economy is. You should determine how you spend on your military by the threats that your country is seeing," he tells Reason. "And right now, we're just not seeing anywhere near the threats, that would justify a $1.5 trillion military budget."