Rethinking America’s Defense Budget
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th U.S. President
In 2025, the United States spent almost $1 trillion on national defense. Although this was a slight decrease compared to the previous year, the Trump Administration is preparing to raise defense spending to unprecedented levels. The budget proposed by President Trump for the 2027 fiscal year allocates an incredible $1.5 trillion for national defense - a request that, if granted, would require a 10% cut to other domestic spending programs.
Before diving into the arguments for and against a reduction in the military budget, let’s take a look at where the U.S. stands worldwide.
In 2025, the U.S. was the leading spender on national defense with $954 B, followed by China ($336 B), Russia ($190 B), and Germany ($114 B). The United States actually spends more on its military annually than the next 7 countries combined. As a proportion of GDP, the U.S. spent 3.1% in 2025, which is slightly higher than the worldwide average, but not by a lot. Moreover, for the past 8 years, the United States has been increasing its military budget by about 6% each year. So, overall, although some of the size of our budget is attributed to the size of our economy, we still are spending much, much more on national defense than any other nation, and we’re continuing to increase that gap.
There are three major arguments for reducing the size of the U.S.’s military budget.
Firstly, contrary to popular belief, increasing military spending doesn’t boost the economy in the long run - it actually impairs it. Sure, a surge in the production of war materials can lead to short-term economic gains, but these gains are usually only in war-related industries and don’t make up for the losses during and after a war. A paper by d’Agostino, Dunne and Pieroni of the universities of Rome, Cape Town, and Perugia (2017) presented evidence that increased military spending leads to “slower economic growth”: over a 20-year period they estimate that a 1% increase in military spending will decrease a country’s growth rate by 9%. This is due to numerous factors, but most importantly “crowding out” of the fiscal budget. We’ve been increasing our defense budget by about 6% each year for the past couple of years, so you can imagine the effect that’s having on our economy. When you take a look at all of our economic troubles - the housing crisis, rising healthcare prices, and crushing education debt, it suggests that the large and consistently expanding defense budget is playing a role. If we aren’t going to start reducing the size of our military budget, let’s at least try to keep it stable enough so that it doesn’t have a negative effect on our economy.
Second, one of the main reasons why our budget is so large is because we need to be confident we are able to fend off the other world powers in the event of an attack. However, the days of full-force ground invasions and territory expansions between great powers are gone. The world’s major powers have shifted to producing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, although the latter will most likely never be used due to the mutual understanding that it would lead to certain destruction. Not to mention, with all of the alliances and peace agreements the U.S. is involved in, a country like Russia or China would have to face the combined forces of NATO plus countries like Australia and Japan if they decided to go to war with us. When our government feels the need to intervene in another country’s circumstances, we should be prioritizing other forms of exerting influence other than attacking them. For example, we can use economic pressures and national intelligence to undermine the enemy country’s operations. In today’s world, there needs to be less of an emphasis placed on building battle ships and guns and instead more resources going towards securing alliances and utilizing other forms of influence.
Third and finally, a large chunk of money that’s allocated for defense spending could be being used on other programs that have a direct impact on the well being of U.S. citizens. The national government is often reluctant to spend more money on programs like housing, education, and healthcare because it would mean an increase in taxes, but this wouldn’t be an issue if they got the funding from the defense budget instead. Of course, I’m not saying we should do away with the entire defense budget, but the facts show that $100 B from the defense budget could pay for:
Power every household in the United States with solar energy
Hire one million elementary school teachers amid a worsening teacher shortage
Provide free tuition for 2 out of 3 public college students in the U.S.
Send every household in the U.S. a $700 check to help offset effects of inflation
Hire 890,000 Registered Nurses to address shortages
Cover medical care for 7 million veterans
Triple current enrollment in Head Start, from 1 million children and families to 3 million
Money going into these programs would benefit us more than if it were to go into building more bullets and bombs.
It’s obvious that the last thing the government should be doing is spending more money on our military, and yet that’s exactly what they’re doing. If we don’t start advocating now for a reduction in the defense budget, our standard of living will continue to drop, and Americans will start to wonder what it is our government is trying so hard to defend.
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/2604_milex_2025.pdf https://warpreventioninitiative.org/peace-science-digest/effects-military-spending-economic-growth/ https://defenseopinion.com/the-u-s-should-cut-defense-spending-heres-how/839/ https://www.ngaus.org/newsroom/president-proposes-15-trillion-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget https://inequality.org/article/pentagon-budget/