On April 3, four weeks after Donald Trump claimed the Iran War would be over in four to five weeks, and with his approval ratings in reputable polls dipping below 40 percent, the president made a wildly audacious ask: Congress, he said, should approve a Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion.
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he → claim → trillion
Congress gave the military an official budget of nearly $1.1 trillion for the 2025 fiscal year—more than the next five runners up (China, Russia, Germany, India, and the UK) combined.
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Congress → give → runners
Now, counting supplemental funding for the War in Iran, which is entering its eighth month, Trump wants US taxpayers to shell out just under $1.6 trillion ($1,570,000,000,000) to a “Department of War” that’s so un-auditable it probably doesn’t know where it left the car keys.
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it → count → keys
That’s an increase of almost 50 percent for things that go boom.
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that → ’ → things
As much as we Americans may value our military readiness
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Americans → value → readiness
, 65 percent of US adults polled by the Washington Post in late April opposed Trump’s unprecedented funding request, and two-thirds disapproved of his “little excursion” in Iran.
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thirds → poll → Iran
(They still do.)
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They → do → ?
The disapproval numbers would be higher still, no doubt, if those people were aware of a dirty little secret: We’re already spending more—way more—than what the Pentagon reports, and most media outlets dutifully parrot.
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outlets → spend → what
A recent report I helped coauthor for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) estimates that, properly accounted for, US military expenditures last year were at least $1.5 trillion, and possibly a lot more.
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expenditures → help → Oversight
If Congress grants Trump’s requests, we’ll be spending $2 trillion to $3 trillion on the military and its wars.
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we → grant → military
For decades, the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon have been obfuscating military spending by means of arcane bureaucratic practices and budgeting tricks.
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House → obfuscate → practices
And yet most journalists and experts quote the official numbers, which are profoundly incomplete.
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which → quote → numbers
Consider, for example, that the Treasury Department covers about $100 billion of the annual cost of supporting retired military personnel.
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Department → consider → personnel
And that the $7.3 billion the State Department shelled out for “global health programs” in fiscal 2025, according to data from USASpending.gov, is actually controlled by the Pentagon.
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Department → shell → Pentagon
(The money, as I point out in my book Base Nation, is used for military intelligence gathering and gaining strategic access to locations around the world.)
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I → point → world
Sometimes it’s smaller sums, like the $385 million the Justice Department shelled out that fiscal year to settle old Vietnam War claims and compensate people harmed by radiation from nuclear weapons testing.
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Department → ’ → testing
If the routine concealment of hundreds of billions in military spending doesn’t feel scandalous to you, imagine the uproar were the Wall Street Journal to suddenly reveal that federal officials were secretly spending almost a half-trillion beyond what Congress budgeted for Medicaid, affordable housing, education, childcare, climate programs, or food assistance.
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Congress → feel → Medicaid
It has been a bipartisan effort spanning years,” Air Force veteran and former military budget analyst Christian Sorensen told me in an email.
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Sorensen → span → email
“When the sheer size of the figures revealed in [the] accounting sinks into public consciousness, the body politic will be even more furious.”
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politic → reveal → consciousness
“The true scale of the military budget is much larger than reported,” concurs Heidi Peltier, an economist and budget expert with Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
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Peltier → report → Project
This overlooked spending raises the total, she says, by “50 percent to 130 percent higher than is usually reported, a figure likely to stun most Americans.
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she → raise → Americans
Quantifying miliary expenditures should be a relatively easy task for journalists and researchers.
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Quantifying → quantify → journalists
“The non-obvious costs” of what budget expert Stephen Semler, a fellow at the progressive Center for International Policy, calls “status quo” military spending are “so vast that it’s difficult to take [their] measure,” he told me.
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he → call → me
The POGO report details how military expenditures are spread across a host of federal departments beyond the Pentagon.
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expenditures → detail → Pentagon
And how, taken together, those amounts may exceed the total of what those agencies receive for nonmilitary purposes.
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agencies → take → purposes
This is not the result of some single diabolical plan, but rather the product of obscure bureaucratic processes wherein the Pentagon, over time, has taken control of money Congress appropriates to other agencies, as a Senate Budget Committee staffer told me on condition of anonymity.
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staffer → take → anonymity
While lawmakers’ actions and motivations in some cases may demand further investigation, their collective complacency has allowed the military to claim a significantly larger share of the federal budget than the public is aware of.
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public → demand → budget
Using five methodologies and data from three government sources, we calculated how much money the government really spent on the military.
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government → use → military
For fiscal 2025, depending on the methodology used and how one defines military spending, that number ranged from $1.5 trillion to $2.3 trillion.
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number → depend → trillion
For example, most of the $33.5 billion in nuclear weapons spending tracked by USASpending.gov was tucked into the Department of Energy budget.
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most → track → budget
And most of the $393.3 billion cost of military pensions, veterans’ benefits, and related retirement expenditures were found on the ledger of the Department of Veterans Affairs, thus relieving the Pentagon of a substantial long-term expense.
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most → find → expense
The USASpending.gov data allowed us to identify billions more in the budgets of at least 15 other agencies, expenses that don’t make it into commonly reported military spending totals.
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that → allow → totals
“No agency on Earth could fail eight audits and still get a $1.5 trillion check, except the Pentagon,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee from San Diego, which has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of military personnel, said in a statement.
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which → fail → statement
And without the accounting to prove the money is properly spent, she added, “we shouldn’t keep footing a bill that gets bigger every year.”
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that → prove → bill
The chart below is based on one of the methodologies described in POGO report.
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chart → base → report
These figures reflect actual dollars spent that fiscal year, including funds Congress appropriated in prior years for multiyear programs.
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Congress → reflect → programs
Indeed, the Department of Defense remains the only federal agency, as Jacobs’ statemente noted, that has never passed a financial audit.
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that → remain → audit
We taxpayers don’t get to choose everything our money is used for, and that’s part of the grand bargain.
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that → get → bargain
Progressives would rather not see their tax dollars supporting Trump’s deportation machine.
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dollars → see → machine
And plenty of conservatives would repeal the Affordable Care Act tomorrow if they could.
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they → repeal → Act
…and 20 more, not listed.
The Aporia
