The White House is more than two weeks behind on finalizing its budget proposal after President Donald Trump approved a request to increase military spending by $500 billion, and before Pentagon officials had any idea how to spend the additional money, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had requested of Trump a roughly 50% boost to military spending, a request Trump agreed to last month, and in spite of opposition from his own White House budget chief. Now, Pentagon officials are scrambling with the self-created “logistical challenges” of finding ways to spend the additional $500 billion, inside sources told the Post.
Retired Marine Corps colonel and analyst Mark Cancian called the self-created challenge a “real head-scratcher,” and expressed confusion as to what the White House’s thinking behind the decision was.
“If you’ve got a 50% budget increase, you don’t have to do any of that,” Cancian told the Post. “You’d be talking about all the new places you’d making investments.”
Under U.S. law, the White House was required to submit its budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year by the first Monday in February, which this year was Feb. 2. As of Saturday, the White House was approaching its third week since missing the statutory deadline, and according to the Post, appears no closer to finalizing its military spending agenda.
“We don’t know what we’re already spending money on. We don’t have details on how the Pentagon is using its trillion-dollar budget,” said Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the Stimson Center, a nonprofit think tank, speaking with the Post.
“How are you supposed to make educated, informed decisions about the military budget if you don’t know where it’s already going?”