On the surface, a widely reported memo authored by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth appears to call for significant cuts to the massive U.S. military budget over each of the next five years — a proposal that quickly received positive feedback from some progressives.
But the details of Hegseth’s proposal, and a public statement from the defense secretary’s deputy, raise serious doubts about whether the floated spending “cuts” would be cuts at all.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Hegseth, in an internal memo, “ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years.” Hegseth instructed officials to hand in their proposals by this coming Monday.
In response to the Post’s reporting, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), long a vocal proponent of cutting the military budget as it approaches $1 trillion a year with bipartisan approval, wrote on social media that “when the Pentagon cannot complete an independent audit, we should cut military spending by 8% a year over the next five years.”
“These savings should go to increasing Social Security benefits and strengthening VA healthcare,” Sanders added.
That is not what the administration appears to have in mind.
In a statement issued Wednesday as headlines in major media outlets characterized Hegseth’s memo as a striking call for “cuts,” Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses described the proposal as a push for “offsets” that could be used to fund other military-related efforts favored by President Donald Trump, including an “Iron Dome for America” that experts have ridiculed as a wasteful “fantasy.”
“The department will develop a list of potential offsets that could be used to fund these priorities, as well as to refocus the department on its core mission of deterring and winning wars,” said Salesses. “The offsets are targeted at 8% of the Biden administration’s FY26 budget, totaling around $50 billion, which will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities.”
The U.S. military budget for Fiscal Year 2025 is roughly $850 billion.
I don’t understand the stories about the supposed cuts to the defense budget. If you “cut” parts of the defense budget and say you’re going to spend that money on a missile defense system…. that’s not really cutting the defense budget?
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 10:14 PM
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Hegseth’s memo also reportedly exempts more than a dozen categories from being used for offsets, including nuclear weapon modernization, military operations at the southern U.S. border, and one-way attack drones.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said Wednesday that “there is plenty of opportunity — and a desperate need for — deep cuts in Pentagon spending, if that is in fact what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is proposing.”
“However, it seems that this announcement may amount to a money-moving exercise within the agency itself rather than an overall Pentagon topline reduction,” said Weissman. “The Hegseth proposal wrongly exempts 17 categories from cuts, including areas that are ripe for savings and which should themselves be curtailed in the name of national security, like the nation’s nuclear arsenal, missile defense, and drones. These protected categories give clues to the administration’s priorities that may be disguised in partial reports about the Hegseth memo: increased militarization and ever-increasing corporate profits.”
“It’s too soon to know exactly what the Hegseth proposal entails, or if it would deliver actual cuts, and so not possible to issue even a preliminary assessment,” he added. “But this much remains clear: It’s time to cut — not increase — the Pentagon budget, and to devote the savings to human needs.”
The details of Hegseth’s memo emerged as Trump threw his support behind a House GOP budget blueprint that calls for a $100 billion increase in U.S. military spending, underscoring the administration’s contradictory posture on the issue.
CNN noted Wednesday that “Hegseth himself called for an increase to the defense budget one week ago.”
“While visiting Stuttgart, Germany,” the outlet reported, “Hegseth said, ‘I think the U.S. needs to spend more than the Biden administration was willing to, who historically underinvested in the capabilities of our military.'”
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