President Trump rose to power on the promise of “draining the swamp” and no more wars, yet his latest $1.5 trillion military budget proposal looks more like a gift-wrapped invitation for the swamp to become even bigger and murkier.
“With deficits larger than 6% of GDP and debt around the size of the economy, the president doesn’t propose any plan for putting our budget on a sustainable path,” warned the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Instead, he calls for a large expansion of the defense budget—increasing defense funding by more than $3.2 trillion over the next decade.”
While the president’s proposal has some defensible ideas for cutting back federal spending—NPR reports the proposal would “reduce spending on non-defense programs by 10% by shifting some responsibilities to state and local governments”—the president is wrongly confusing wasteful military spending with making America great again.
As evidenced by his unconstitutional war with Iran, the president no longer seems to have the interests of the American people in mind. Instead, he is pandering to special interests at the expense of people who voted for him to focus on helping Americans rather than waging pointless wars abroad.
It should be pointed out that, as has been true for many years, the United States already overspends on the military as it is. In 2024, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation pointed out that the United States spent more on its military budget than the next nine countries combined. Yes, that includes China and Russia.
In 2025, the Pentagon failed its eighth consecutive audit. Given the right’s fixation on rooting out fraud, perhaps the administration should scrutinize the military-industrial complex before calling for a massive spending increase.
As Reason Magazine recently commemorated, it’s been 10 years since Trump vowed to pay down the national debt in an incredible eight years. “Instead, the gross national debt has doubled since that day—from about $19 trillion to over $39 trillion,” Eric Boehm reported. “Much of that additional borrowing has taken place during Trump’s five-plus years in the White House.”
While there are those who haven’t connected the dots and still say there’s nothing wrong with all of this debt, one need only reflect on the terrible inflation and erosion of the value of our dollars in just a few years thanks to profligate federal spending.
American greatness isn’t achieved by wasting money on a bloated military budget. If the president wants to really put America first, he would focus on putting America’s fiscal house in order, end his frivolous war in Iran, and aggressively audit the Pentagon before even thinking of throwing more money at it.