The Pentagon’s Secret Budget

The most obvious place where Congress and the executive branch hide military spending is in the Department of Energy’s budget. That’s where taxpayers can find the bill for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, which cost around $33.5 billion in 2025.

hundreds of billions of dollars are effectively hidden in the budgets of at least 17 other government agencies and entities. In total, each of these additional sums are larger than what Congress appropriates for every non-military agency

David Vine, CounterPunch. October 2, 2026

News reports that next year’s U.S. military budget will top out at $1.5 trillion if President Donald Trump gets his way are misleading at best. The true total, if Trump’s proposal passes, could be at least $1 trillion higher.

Long before Trump took office, U.S. taxpayers have spent far more on the Pentagon — and its wars — than most know. For decades, Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon have hidden the military’s true cost through little-known bureaucratic practices and budgeting tricks. Journalists, academics, and think tank experts have, with rare exceptions, perpetuated the problem by repeating “official” numbers that don’t come close to telling the full story.

Data shows that the budget was already between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion in the last full fiscal year, 2025, as detailed by a recent Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, report I co-authored. Trump’s requests would add another $781 billion, bringing the potential total to at least $2.581 trillion in 2027.

The troubling revelation that the government is misleading the public and effectively hiding hundreds of billions in military spending reflects the out-of-control nature of the Pentagon budget. It’s also the only sector of government spending that seems largely insulated from public scrutiny: Imagine the outrage if news broke that the government was hiding hundreds of billions in spending for public housing, Medicaid, or hunger prevention programs.

People have a right to know how much tax money goes to military spending. This is critical to debating the proper size of the military budget both on its own and compared to other spending priorities, particularly any program related to education or the social safety net. Understanding the military’s true cost means understanding where and how the government has been hiding the money.

Spending Hidden in Other Budgets

It’s difficult to untangle how much the country actually spends on the military in part because Congress pays for the armed forces and wars from many budgets rather than one. Beyond the agency controlling the military branches that Trump calls the “Department of War” (the official name is still the Department of Defense), hundreds of billions of dollars are effectively hidden in the budgets of at least 17 other government agencies and entities. In total, each of these additional sums are larger than what Congress appropriates for every non-military agency.

For years, TomDispatch and a small but mostly ignored group of budget experts have warned that tota l military spending is far higher than reported. Our new POGO report consolidates this prior work and five different methodologies for calculating the true military budget. The report shows a consensus that military spending was at least $1.5 trillion, with three of five methods reaching similar estimates of $1.7 trillion to $1.8 trillion.

The newest of the five methodologies provides the easiest way for anyone to see the hidden spending. The methodology uses data from a government website, USAspending.gov, the product of a 2006 law requiring the government “to give the American public access to information on how their tax dollars are being spent.” The site includes the closest thing to actual spending receipts, making it easier to identify military spending beyond the Department of War’s budget.

Let’s take a look at where the money’s hiding.

Hidden Nuclear Weapons Costs: $33.8 Billion

The Department of War controls and deploys these weapons, and their costs should properly be part of its budget, not rolled into the Department of Energy. While the Energy Department plays a role in overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, putting nuclear weapons spending in the DOE’s budget is like a city putting the costs of its police department’s bullets in its transportation department budget rather than in the police budget.

Another $300 million in nuclear weapons spending hides in the budgets of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Army Corps of Engineers, bringing the total to nearly $34 billion.

Hidden Military Personnel (Veterans) Costs: $393.3 Billion

Taxpayers spend huge sums on the military in the Department of Veterans Affairs and related budgets. The existence of a separate veterans’ agency is a sleight of hand that leads the public to believe this is not military spending. It is. The only difference is the appropriation of money to still another agency……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The True Cost of the Department of War: $1.3 Trillion

The bulk of military expenditures still appear in the Department of War’s budget, which pays for the armed forces and the rest of the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, including all the weapons, salaries, some benefits, military construction, fuel, maintenance, operational expenses, and much more. USAspending.gov receipts show the Department of War alone spent $1.273 trillion in 2025. The Pentagon controlled another $480 million in spending that hid in the budgets of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Transportation.

Combined with the $444.8 billion tallied previously, total military spending hits $1.718 trillion. That’s more than double the military budget usually reported for 2025: the $850 billion Congress appropriated to the Department of War.

Still Other Costs

The $1.7 trillion estimate for last year is conservative and still may be too low. While the War Department budget contains classified funding for the CIA, National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies, the government may hide more intelligence spending elsewhere. NASA space research involves considerable military work, which could add another $10.5 billion, according to USAspending.gov data. Some would also count $1.9 billion in FBI salaries and expenses found in the Department of Justice budget.

Other experts consider much larger expenditures in the DHS budget to be military spending, given that department’s role in protecting the “homeland” and the increasingly militarized nature of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol. This would add at least $216.9 billion after excluding DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency spending. Alternate methodologies also include $211.9 billion in interest payments on the more than $40 trillion in national debt stemming from past military spending and wars.

You can add and subtract forms of spending that you think belong or don’t belong in the true total, thanks to the transparency of the POGO report’s methodologies. In total, these excluded sums could add another $441.2 billion to the USAspending.gov method’s prior total of $1.718 trillion for 2025.

Growing Opposition to Unchecked Pentagon Spending

POGO report’s conservative estimates of the FY2025 budget being $1.5 trillion to $1.8 trillion reveal that the true military budget for 2027 could hit $2.6 trillion if Congress gives Trump what he wants. This includes requested increases totaling $781 billion for just the Department of War ($500 billion), the Iran war ($70 billion), veterans ($144.9 billion), nuclear weapons ($53.9 billion), and the Coast Guard ($12.5 billion), let alone other smaller forms of hidden Pentagon spending.

When mind-numbing numbers like these reach the trillions, it can be tempting to think, What does it matter if it’s $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion or $2.6 trillion?

It helps me to remember that every single dollar spent on the Pentagon is a dollar not spent on our children, on healthcare, on affordable housing, on efforts to slow catastrophic climate change, and much more……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/02/the-pentagons-secret-budget/