Congress is on track to finish work on the fiscal year 2025 Pentagon budget this week, and odds are that it will add $150 billion to its funding for the next few years beyond what the department even asked for. Meanwhile, President Trump has announced a goal of over $1 trillion for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2026.
With these immense sums flying out the door, it’s a good time to take a critical look at the Pentagon budget, from the rationales given to justify near record levels of spending to the impact of that spending in the real world. Here are five things you should know about the Pentagon budget and the military-industrial complex that keeps the churn going.
#1 The military-industrial complex (the MIC) is a special interest lobby on steroids.
In many ways the denizens of the MIC — the Pentagon, the uniformed military, the weapons makers, and their allies in Congress — are more concerned with lining their own pockets and deriving political benefits than they are with crafting well-considered plans for how best to defend America and its allies.
Unfortunately, since Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex in his January 17, 1961 farewell address, the military-industrial complex is more powerful than ever. The companies are larger, the budget is larger, and its influence is greater, so advocates of a more affordable, effective approach to defense have even a higher hill to climb than they did six decades ago.
#2 More Pentagon Spending Doesn’t Make Us Safer
Contrary to the common misconception that when it comes to military spending, more is always better, too often overspending on the Pentagon fuels costly and dangerous arms races and enables unnecessary wars by emphasizing military solutions and neglecting smart diplomacy.
Our current, “cover the globe” strategy calls for the U.S. military to be able to intervene anywhere in the world on short notice. It calls for an immense, costly global military footprint that includes over 750 military bases and counterterror operations in 85 countries. It is a recipe for endless war. And when we’re not intervening directly, we’re often providing the weapons for other countries to fight wars, as is happening, with tragic effect, in the billions of dollars in arms the United States has supplied in support of Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza.
If we want to defend ourselves, we should figure out what we need to defend ourselves, rather than just piling one weapon on another weapon on another weapon and hope that it all works out.
#3 The Military-Industrial Complex is a Terrible Jobs Program
The economy is getting weaker and debt exploding, so there is a premium on spending our tax dollars in ways that can counter, and hopefully reverse, that trend.
Jobs should be front and center in our national priorities. If you can’t make money, if you can’t feed your family, that’s a threat to your security, and, if enough people are in that category, it’s a threat to national security writ large.
Unfortunately, pumping up the Pentagon is not a solution to these adverse economic trends. As Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has demonstrated, investing in alternatives like infrastructure, green energy, education and health care can generate anywhere from 9 percent to 250 percent more jobs for the same amount spent as giving the same amount of money to the Pentagon and the arms industry.
Even worse, there is evidence to suggest that Pentagon spending will be an even poorer job creator going forward. According to the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the arms industry’s largest trade association, direct jobs in the arms manufacturing sector have dropped by almost two-thirds since the 1980s, from 3 million jobs then to 1.1 million jobs now.
And a defense industrial base focused on software-based emerging tech weapons that utilize AI to produce pilotless aircraft, ships and armored vehicles will likely create even fewer jobs per amount spent than current military outlays.
#4 The majority of the Pentagon budget goes to contractors.
While Pentagon budget boosters always argue that higher military spending is good for the troops, analyst Stephen Semler has determined that more than half of the department’s budget goes to contractors. And at the same time these firms are reaping hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxes each year, there are military families who need food stamps to make ends meet, and sharp cuts in veterans benefits in the offing based on budget proposals for this year and next.
Meanwhile, the arms makers are producing dysfunctional weapons systems that don’t work as advertised, cost billions more than originally projected, and spend more time in the hangar than being ready to use. To add insult to injury, much of the new funding they have received in recent years has gone to $20 million CEO salaries, or billions in spending to bid up their own stock prices – none of this spending does anything to defend us, but it does enrich the weapons makers, their executives, and their shareholders.
Really taking care of the troops would require spending more to take care of them by providing affordable housing and health care; better, more realistic training before sending them into combat; weapons that work as advertised and don’t spend half the time being repaired instead of being ready for combat; and a more realistic strategy that doesn’t put them in impossible situations and unwinnable wars.
And it would mean spending the $45 million-plus allocated for a military parade into directly investing in the needs of our veterans, and telling and honoring their stories rather than putting the focus on ostentatious displays of weaponry.
#5 It doesn't have to be this way
Promoters of ever higher Pentagon spending claim that pushing for more diplomacy, or having allies do more in their own defense is naive, because it’s a harsh world out there and it is necessary to have force and the threat of force as the leading elements of our foreign policy. Actually, if you want to defend the country, don’t overspend on the military, and don’t let special interests shape our foreign policy for their own financial gain. Don’t just assume that every solution has to be military. A military-first approach to foreign policy is not only naive, it is incredibly dangerous.
