Posted on 04/07/2025 8:40:47 PM PDT by RandFan
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged a first ever $1 trillion defense budget proposal on Monday, a record sum for the military.
Trump, during a press event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the upcoming budget would be “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion
Hegseth went further in an X post on Monday evening, saying Trump “is rebuilding our military — and FAST.”
“COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar @DeptofDefense budget,” Hegseth posted from his personal account. “(PS: we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness).”
The number would be a significant increase from the $892 billion funding Congress allocated for national defense programs this year, which includes the Pentagon, nuclear weapons development and security programs at other agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
It’s to scare China into an arms race they can’t possibly win. Sound familiar?
It was a good plan that Reagan had, but under him the US wasn’t anywhere remotely near $37 trillion in debt.
It may be a wartime budget, if China is indeed going to invade Taiwan.
It does ring a bell but I’m a spring chicken around here.
Are we going to have a new Cold war?
Waste of money.
Yes. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to make China think it is.
If by new you mean since Clinton was President?
Why not lower military spending by 200-300 billion a year by making Europe do vastly more to defend themselves and not the US do this?
The US has defended them while they shifted the money saved to their social welfare programs for decades.
And make Japan, Singapore, Australia, NZ, Taiwan, and other Asian-Pacific allies shift more of their spending to military to help the US, saving the US at least amother 100 billion plus.
This administration has said repeatedly they’re tired of carrying Europe, but hasn’t done anything really where it counts: $$$.
Are they going to stop the waste and fraud yet?
This has got to be at least 6-dimensional chess.
Unlike Reagan he is not even telling them where he is spending the extra money. Leak a few plausible, but very expensive, areas on Signal and they will be chasing their tails forever.
This has got to be at least 6-dimensional chess.
Unlike Reagan he is not even telling them where he is spending the extra money. Leak a few plausible, but very expensive, areas on Signal and they will be chasing their tails forever.
I think it’s over the top, but imagine I’m in the minority here on FR.
If it’s to be wisely spent on R&D to equip us for next generation defence capabilities and the like, a sort of one-time surge to play catch up and leap frog, then okay — provided it means we can spend less in the future and have cutting edge but lasting advantages. The R&D would likely have spinoff civilian applications to improve our economy, too.
We’ve been spending a very high percentage of our GDP on our military compared to peer and near peer nations. We spent trillions and trillions on stupid useless drawn out wars of choice. Meanwhile, China wisely invested in R&D and infrastructure.
And...
United States spending on the military: around 968.0 billion a year, China around 235 billion a year, Russia around 145 billion a year.
I know that neocons won’t like all that I’ve said here on this thread so far, but the US is going broke.
I think, as others have postulated, it’s mind games. Trump is not a war hog
I think Trump saved the U.S. taxpayers something like $140 billion by making NATO nations pay more in his first administration, but obviously the Europeans have to do more these days.
Moon bases and killer satellites. And sharks with lasers.
He’ll probably roll it up into AI and energy. If we force China to compete on cheap energy and AI they will spend themselves into oblivion.
How much did Biden dish out to Ukraine? How far behind is our military due to a hostile administration. I will cost a lot to fix it all.
It should be the US spends $0 on Europe, they are more than capable, collectively, of defending themselves, and the UK, French, and German govt’s practically loathe the US anyway.
Reagan had more reason than his plan to bring down Russia, without his sudden buildup we probably would have faced the Russian move in Europe in 1984.
On the day Reagan took office there was an urgency required to close that 1984 window, by late 1985 a lot of us were breathing easier.
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