Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028336
TRUMP POLICY CHOICES
US MILITARY
CommonDreams: Trump Pledges $1 Trillion for US Military
While Hitting Working Class With Huge Tax Hike
US MILITARY
CommonDreams: Trump Pledges $1 Trillion for US Military
While Hitting Working Class With Huge Tax Hike
U.S. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deliver
remarks in the Oval Office of the White House on March 21, 2025.
(Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-trillion-military-budget
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I was introduced to the history of politics when I was quite young. I have some memory of learning that Prime Minister Gladstone was very outspoken against the idea of a universal voting franchise in the UK. His rationale was simply that most people simply did not know enough to make informed decisions about such matters as voting!
I think Gladstone had a point. How any country would actually vote for Donald Trump to become the President of the country makes no sense ... and doing it twice makes even less sense.
Winston Churchill famously said of 'democracy' that it is a very flawed system, but 'it is far the best one there is.!
It surprises me that discussion about the 'failure' of the American political process is so muted at the present time. It confirms for me that the 'guardrails' that were put in place at the time of American independence have pretty much been eviscerated bit by bit over the many years since the coutry-s founding.
The record spending for the military from the Trump administration worries me. The rules are clear ... the military is not allowedee to be 'political' and operate within the United States, but Trump does not respect any rules and this money for the military likely is essentially a 'bribe' to get the military to be in support of Trump no matter what the constitution and American tradition stand for!
Big spending on the military by the Trump administration likely is a very bad signal!
In his last speach as President, Eisenhauer warned about the emerging 'military-industry-complex'. It was an important warning, but nothing of substance has been done and military spending has dominated the US public expenditure budget all my adult lifetime ... more than 60 years. I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in London in the mid-60s. What I have seen over many decades suggests that the US military is rife with financial mismanagement, but very difficult to eliminate because of all sorts of road-blocks and security considerations! Brilliant ... but fundamentally wrong!
Peter Burgess
'Spending $1 trillion on the Pentagon while hollowing out resources for diplomacy and launching a global trade war is a recipe for international conflict and American decline,' warned one analyst.
Written by Jake Johnson ... Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Apr 08, 2025
President Donald Trump on Monday publicly backed an annual budget of roughly $1 trillion for the U.S. military as his administration rushed ahead with a destructive tariff scheme that amounts to a major tax increase on American households, with working-class families set to bear much of the pain.
Speaking to reporters at the White House during a sit-down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said his administration has signed off on an upcoming military budget in the vicinity of $1 trillion, which would be a record sum. The military budget for the current fiscal year is $892 billion, more than half of the federal government's discretionary budget.
'Nobody's seen anything like it,' Trump said Monday of his $1 trillion budget proposal.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth later chimed in on social media, voicing enthusiastic support for a $1 trillion military budget and vowing to spend those dollars 'on lethality and readiness.'
Watch Trump's comments:
William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned in a statement Tuesday that 'spending $1 trillion on the Pentagon while hollowing out resources for diplomacy and launching a global trade war is a recipe for international conflict and American decline.'
'The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught us that a military-first approach to foreign policy is both ineffective and immensely costly in blood and treasure,' said Hartung. 'As for dealing with the challenge posed by China, we need a more balanced approach that mixes diplomacy with deterrence and keeps open the option for dialogue and cooperation on urgent issues like climate change, pandemics, and the perilous state of the global economy.'
'Pursuing a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget at the expense of other priorities,' he added, 'would be a trillion-dollar blunder.'
Trump and Hegseth's remarks indicate that the Pentagon—long a hotbed of waste and egregious abuse of taxpayer money, largely for the benefit of private contractors—will likely remain insulated from the Elon Musk-led effort to dismantle federal agencies under the guise of boosting government efficiency.
In February, Hegseth authored a memo instructing Pentagon leaders to draw up plans to reduce the military budget in each of the next five years. But it soon became clear that the Pentagon leadership is pushing to divert funds to Trump priorities—including his proposed Iron Dome for America boondoggle—rather than reduce overall spending.
Under Democratic and Republican presidents, and with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, the U.S. military budget has been steadily racing toward the $1 trillion mark year after year, despite the Pentagon's inability to pass an audit and mounting evidence of large-scale fraud and misuse of taxpayer money.
Trump's budget proposal would have to be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, which is currently working—with the president's support—to further slash taxes for the rich and large corporations and cut Medicare, food aid, and other federal assistance programs.
'Trump plans on liquidating Medicaid and SNAP benefits while giving the Pentagon a trillion dollars,' wrote Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute. 'If the Democrats can't make a coherent political message out of these basic facts, they're not an opposition party, or even a party.'
This story has been updated to include a statement from William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
An Unconstitutional Rampage
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next.
It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk.
Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support.
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Jake JohnsonJake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.