On the 2020 campaign trail, candidate Joe Biden said President Trump had abandoned all fiscal discipline on military spending. Four years later, the Pentagon budget is $146 billion higher than when Trump left office, and President Biden just exploited a loophole in his budget deal with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to secure $67 billion more.
In March, Congress approved $886 billion for the Pentagon, in line with the spending limits enforced by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA). On Wednesday, Biden signed legislation containing $95 billion in “emergency” spending — which isn’t subject to the FRA’s spending limits — for Israel’s war on Gaza, Ukraine’s war against Russia, and additional U.S. armament in the Indo-Pacific. Seventy percent of the funding goes to Pentagon programs.
Between last month’s regular appropriations and this week’s war supplemental, the 2024 Pentagon budget will be at least $953 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than the average annual U.S. military budget during World War II. A trillion-dollar Pentagon budget used to be hyperbole; now it’s almost reality.
Lawmakers who want to move toward a more sensible level of military spending should know two things. The first is that public opinion is on their side. The second is that public opinion is not enough to challenge the arms industry’s influence over Washington — public pressure on Congress is needed. Introducing a bill that addresses Pentagon excess and working people’s material concerns can help.
At no point during Biden’s military buildup has more than one in five Americans supported increasing the Pentagon budget. Little wonder: Political leaders demand a cash-strapped public to fund a foreign policy that’s deeply flawed and incredibly expensive. For example, the last two administrations said surging military spending would prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific, but budgeting like war with China was inevitable has only made war more likely. As a practical matter, the Pentagon hasn’t shown that it can even manage such gargantuan budgets, having never passed an audit.
A leaner Pentagon budget might compel U.S. leaders to rethink this dangerous strategy, or at least show greater respect for taxpayer dollars while implementing it. More than half of the annual military budget goes to private contractors, and the Pentagon allows these contractors to overcharge taxpayers on almost everything it buys. This includes too-big-to-fail projects like the F-35, the Defense Department’s most expensive weapon system. A report from the Government Accountability Office this month found that the cost to sustain the aircraft increased 44 percent from 2018 to 2023, but that the “fleet’s availability has trended downward considerably.” Put simply, the F-35 is getting more expensive but less effective. This year’s budget buys 86 of them.
The astonishing growth in military spending since 2021 suggests Congress is on autopilot, approving massive and unconditional increases to the Pentagon budget without paying much mind to the negative consequences, the cost or public opinion. The arms industry goes great lengths to keep it this way. Military contractors fund influential think tanks to give their profit-driven demands a scholarly gloss, retain more lobbyists than Congress has elected officials, and pour tens of millions of dollars into elections.
These tactics work. For instance, before voting to authorize $886 billion in military spending this year, each House member had received on average $20,000 in political donations from military contractors this election cycle. House members who voted for the bill accepted four times more arms industry cash than those who voted no, on average. Senators who supported the bill took five times more, on average. This correlation has been apparent in each of the last three years.
Stopping a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget requires mass movement to overcome the arms industry’s hold over Congress. Lawmakers can catalyze one through the right legislation. In addition to reducing Pentagon excess, the legislation must also appeal to the material concerns of working people, who already have a lot to worry about: Sixty-two percent of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, 36 percent had difficulty covering typical household expenses within the last week, and 23 percent were unable to pay an energy bill in full sometime in the last year. Lawmakers must offer a peace dividend that immediately and directly addresses these concerns if they want enough people pressuring Congress for a more sensible military budget.
The bill I wrote as part of a recent policy proposal would refund taxpayers for Biden’s military buildup, at least in part. It resets this year’s Pentagon base budget to the amount authorized for 2021, and returns the $146 billion in savings to the public through a $600 tax rebate. Reductions would not apply to troop pay, the Defense Health Program or emergency spending. This is a modest proposal: If enacted, the 2024 military budget would stand at $808 billion, which is well-above Cold War highs.
The $600 rebates enacted in December 2020 reached 147 million households. If introduced, the conversation around trade-offs will move from abstract discussion to a real policy choice: Either continue Biden’s dangerous military buildup, or lower taxes for hundreds of millions of Americans. Polling suggests most people would strongly prefer the latter.
Stephen Semler is co-founder of Security Policy Reform Institute, a U.S. foreign policy think tank.