$1,000,000,000,000

President Trump and his allies have told Americans that the federal deficit is an existential threat to the country that necessitates immediate spending cuts. "[I]f we don't do something, the entire government budget will be paying interest — there won’t be money for anything," Elon Musk said on a November 2024 episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. "No, there won’t be money for Social Security, there won’t be money for Medicare, nothing. That’s where we’re headed. That’s what bankruptcy means."

Since Trump took office, Musk, as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has pushed for spending cuts across the federal government. As a result, grants supporting high school students with disabilities have been terminated, cancer research has been curtailed, and thousands of positions at the Social Security Administration have been eliminated.

Trump has backed these efforts enthusiastically. In remarks delivered at the White House on April 2, Trump praised his administration's efforts "to cut spending and right size the budget back to where it should be."

Meanwhile, the bulk of federal discretionary spending, by far, is spent on the military. In 2023, Department of Defense (DoD) spending exceeded that of the next 10 largest government agencies combined. DoD spending has been growing rapidly. In 2015, the United States spent $585 billion on the military. In the current fiscal year, that figure is $892.5 billion.

Apparently, that is not nearly enough.

On Monday, Trump announced that he was preparing to propose a $1 trillion military budget for the 2026 fiscal year. "$1 trillion, and nobody’s seen anything like it. We have to build our military, and we’re very cost conscious, but the military is something that we have to build, and we have to be strong, because you got a lot of bad forces out there now," Trump said during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "So we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military."

Trump's new plan for the military budget is a sharp break from his posture earlier this year. In February, Trump said that "there's no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on military." At the time, Trump said he wanted to engage in talks with China and Russia about the countries reducing their nuclear arsenals as a way to reduce military spending. "[W]e can settle this, we can spend this on other things," Trump argued.

This week, Trump provided no details on why a $107 billion increase was necessary at a time when the United States is not a direct participant in any war. Nor did he indicate how the additional funds would be spent.

But the proposal was enthusiastically endorsed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:

More than half of all military spending is transferred to military contractors.

DOGE dodges DoD

Musk has set a goal to cut $1 trillion annually from federal spending through DOGE. But his efforts have largely ignored the DoD, according to data compiled by the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker.

Thus far, DOGE claims to have cut $140 billion from federal spending. But on its website, it only provides line items for $90.6 billion. Of that $90.6 billion in itemized claimed cuts, just $162 million involves the DoD — 0.18% of all itemized cuts. Musk Watch estimates that, when properly calculating the real savings from canceled contracts and grants, DOGE has verifiably cut just $11.7 billion. Of that adjusted total, $88 million involves the DoD — 0.7% of all verified cuts.

These are extremely low percentages for a department that accounts for nearly half of all federal discretionary spending.

Hegseth, however, is a vocal supporter of Musk's efforts to cut government spending. On February 19, the DoD announced that it was going through a process to identify "8% of the Biden Administration's FY26 budget, totaling around $50 billion" to cut. These funds would then be used "on programs aligned with President Trump's priorities." Presumably, this was a way in which they could free up dollars for new spending without increasing the total budget. The DoD claimed this was possible through eliminating anything related to "'climate change' and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy."

There has been no update on these purported efforts to cut spending. And now the plan is to increase the budget by more than $100 billion.

Where to find waste, fraud, and abuse

Trump and others have framed the cuts imposed by DOGE as an effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. But any serious effort to tackle financial mismanagement in the federal government should begin with the DoD.

The DoD has not passed an audit of its finances since Congress began mandating the audits in 2018. The 2024 audit, which surveyed 28 separate agencies that operate under the Pentagon’s umbrella, found that 15 agencies failed to provide enough information for the auditors to assess how they handle their money.

The 15 agencies that could not properly account for their finances make up 44 percent of the Pentagon’s total assets and 68 percent of its budget. In 2024, the Pentagon held over $4.1 trillion in assets and had a budget of over $840 billion, meaning that auditors could not pin down $1.8 trillion in assets and $571 billion of the budget.

Despite these failings, the Biden administration increased the DoD budget from $768 billion to $893 billion over the course of his presidency. Now, Trump and Republicans in Congress are preparing to add another $107 billion or more to the pile.

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We started a new publication, Musk Watch. NPR covered our launch HERE. It features accountability journalism focused on one of the most powerful humans in history. It is free to sign up, so we hope you’ll give it a try and let us know what you think.

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Who benefits from a bloated Defense budget?

Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, could directly benefit from a larger DoD budget. Inside the department, SpaceX rockets are reportedly "being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe."

The government could sign much larger contracts with SpaceX if it moves forward with plans to create a new missile defense system for the United States. That project, known as the Golden Dome, "would drive launch spending even higher, as the government would need to purchase more devices to track missile threats and transmit the data to target them, services that SpaceX also provides." The Golden Dome is projected to cost around $100 billion annually.

Last week, the U.S. Space Force announced it would pay SpaceX $5.9 billion to conduct 28 rocket launches.