Excessive Defense Spending is Counterproductive
This month, the Senate requested a 3.4 percent increase in defense spending for the 2025 fiscal year. This is an increase from the planned 1 percent increase that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden agreed to in 2023. Policymakers complain that increasing defense spending by only 1 percent is not enough to meet America’s military commitments. In a sense, these policymakers are right: America’s military means fail to match its ends. However, simply throwing money at defense programs is not the answer to this problem. Instead, policymakers need to limit America’s strategic objectives and clearly delineate how specific weapons and their associated costs will meet these goals. There are several reasons as to why the United States should reconsider the amount of expenditure it devotes toward defense.
For starters, more prudent defense spending would make America’s military more effective. There are weapons projects whose strategic purposes remain unclear. For instance, there is no clear reason why U.S. forces should maintain the B-83 gravity bomb in America’s nuclear arsenal. Other weapons programs undergo questionable procurement processes and sustainment practices. The F-35 program, for example, continues to experience delays in its delivery timeline and increasing costs, which are predicted to total over $2 trillion through the year 2088 (nearly double the estimate made in 2018). According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a “heavy reliance on contractors, inadequate training, lack of technical data, lack of spare parts, and lack of support equipment” also reduces the readiness of the F-35.
America’s arsenal also contains systems with significant overlaps in capabilities, making them redundant and unnecessary. The B-1B strategic bomber is one such capability. This bomber can carry only conventional bombs, while its counterparts, the B-2, and the B-52 strategic bomber, are capable of carrying conventional and nuclear payloads. A further comparative analysis shows that both the B-1B and the B-52 have slim chances of penetrating enemy airspace. Yet, the B-52 has a payload capacity of 70,000 pounds at a cost of roughly $115 million per bomber in 2024 dollars, while the B-1B has a payload capacity of 75,000 pounds at a cost of $317 million per bomber. This means that the United States already has similar bombers to the B-1B at a cheaper price. The B-83 gravity bomb, the F-35, and the B-1B are just some examples of weapon capabilities that either need to be cut completely or undergo serious reforms.
Second is the issue of accountability to the American public. Public servants have an obligation to be as transparent as possible about their activities to the American people, especially when it comes to the way in which the government spends money. According to the Congressional Budget Office, total discretionary spending for 2023 amounted to $1.7 trillion, with $805 billion spent on defense. This means that defense spending used a total of 47 percent of discretionary outlays, a sizable amount.
Moreover, the United States has spent more on defense today than at any other point in its recent history. In 1988, at the end of the Cold War and after the Reagan administration’s military buildup, the United States spent $720.59 billion on defense in FY 2025 constant dollars. By comparison, the United States spent $923.69 billion on defense expenditures in 2023. While this comparison might satisfy those who take Reagan’s “peace through strength” to a radical meaning, it should concern the everyday Americans whose tax dollars fund these defense projects.
Not only is reckless defense spending a blatant disregard for accountability to the American public of their tax dollars, but it also reduces America’s position of power in the world. Spending more on defense prevents funds from being saved to balance America’s $34.89 trillion debt and its $1.7 trillion deficit in 2023. Some of the consequences of an overwhelming national debt and deficit include higher interest rates, slower economic productivity, and increased risk of a financial crisis.
As Paul Kennedy detailed in his book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, history shows that countries that overspend on their defense tend to decline in economic power and eventually in their position on the world stage. Essentially, countries must find a balance between military spending and domestic savings. Both sides of the political aisle today fail at this prudence in defense investment, and both compromise with one another, resulting in spending increases on social and defense programs. The average American supports the benefits of social programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, making proposed cuts to such programs extremely unpopular. The best way to fix this imbalance in defense spending is to limit America’s objectives—namely military objectives—abroad. The fewer military missions there are for the U.S. military to undergo, the less it will need to spend on defense.
This short piece offers a small glimpse as to why more prudence is needed when it comes to defense spending in the United States. Restraining America’s military commitments abroad, along with policymakers and the American public having serious debates over defense spending programs, are the best pathways forward to resolving America’s defense spending process. Doing so will result in a healthier democracy and a more powerful America.
Benjamin D. Giltner is a defense and foreign policy analyst. He earned a Master’s of International Affairs from the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. His research interests include military strategy, great-power competition, and deterrence. Follow him on LinkedIn and X @GiltnerBen.
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