William Hartung
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.
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