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On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the “greatest threat” that the U.S. faces is not the historic affordability crisis, institutionalized corruption, or rapid erosion of basic rights, but rather the prospect that the Pentagon — and the military contractors who profit from its contracts — may not get a half trillion-dollar raise next year.
During his testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee in which he advocated for the White House’s request for an additional $87 billion for the U.S. and Israel’s disastrous war on Iran, Hegseth said that “building the lethality of our joint force” and “reinforcing peace through strength” must be a top priority.
“Not funding this department at 1.5 trillion, I believe, is the greatest threat that our nation faces,” Hegseth said.
The secretary said that there were “shortfalls” under the Biden administration and that it was “not a priority to fund the Department of Defense under Biden” — an assertion that is simply untrue. The Pentagon budget rose to record-breaking levels under Biden, with the Democratic administration requesting $850 billion for 2025, compared to a $740 billion budget during his first year in office.
Congress and the Trump administration already faced heavy criticism when they passed a Pentagon budget exceeding $1 trillion last year for the first time since World War II, when nearly the entire U.S. economy was mobilized for the war effort.
Now, the White House is requesting a record-shattering $1.5 trillion budget for next year. The additional $500 billion alone is enough to fund nearly the entire yearly budget for Medicaid, as the National Priorities Project points out. Or, it’s enough to fund the combined annual budgets for Child Tax Credit, SNAP, the federal school lunch program, FEMA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Instead, as in years past, roughly half of the Pentagon’s massive budget will go toward private contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as well as companies owned by Trump allies like Palantir and SpaceX. The rest will be spent within an agency that is incapable of keeping track of its assets, as the Pentagon is the only one of the government’s 24 major agencies that has never passed an audit.
The particular Pentagon budget that Hegseth is referring to, the 2027 National Defense Authority Act, contains a provision to establish a program that would integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries’ supply chains and technology development on an unprecedented level.
Hegseth’s comment on the “threat” to the U.S. is highly ironic considering that, just on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized Iran’s government for spending money on militarism rather than spending on programs directly serving the Iranian people.
“They spent billions of dollars supporting militias in Iraq, Hezbollah, and Hamas,” Rubio said. “They should be spending billions of dollars supporting the people of Iran. They should be spending on things like building their country. “
During the hearing, Hegseth claimed that the Iran war — the most unpopular war on polling record in U.S. history — has only cost $37.5 billion so far. However, NBC reported last week that, internally, the Pentagon estimates that the war has cost at least $80 billion, and up to $100 billion thus far.
Hegseth also struggled to make the case that another $87 billion was necessary to continue fighting the war. When asked about the $75 billion in unspent funds allocated to the Pentagon by the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill last year, Hegseth said that that money was already being spent on helping to “move away from all the woke priorities of what the Biden administration was pursuing” and toward things like the development of oft-criticized hypersonic weapons.
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