by  Olabisi Omoniyi-Alake

Photo courtesy of Fibonacci Blue from Minnesota

The Pentagon has never achieved a clean audit. For seven consecutive years, the Department of Defense has received a “disclaimer of opinion” on its audits - a flunking grade on its financial statements. Thus, the Pentagon was not able to fully account for its immense $824 billion budget in FY 2024. 

Meanwhile, the GOP budget that Congress just narrowly passed does not account for the massive financial deficiencies of the Pentagon. The OBBB would give the Pentagon $150 billion in new funding, boosting its FY 2026 budget to a historic $1 trillion. 

This historic spending increase for war and weapons is being funded by cutting funding from life-saving programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). As many as 17 million people could lose health insurance under the bill and other changes the Trump administration has made. Cuts to SNAP would result in reduced benefits for millions of people, including children and veterans, and changes to the CTC would cause 2.6 million U.S. citizen children to lose their eligibility for the program. The Republicans in Congress have used a charade of government efficiency to justify funding reductions in these anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs. 

Trump’s latest vanity project, “The Golden Dome”, is included in the proposed weighty increase of the Pentagon budget. Marketed as a defense shield that would “safeguard the American homeland”, experts say his vision is beyond the bounds of reality and would be an immense expense to the federal budget and taxpayers.

In November 2025, it is expected that the Pentagon will fail its annual audit due to “significant fraud exposure”.  From 2017 to 2024, the Pentagon confirmed that there is $10.8 billion in confirmed fraud, with a notable case in 2023 when the Department confirmed spending $51,000 on a trash can.

The GAO has submitted hundreds of recommendations to the Pentagon to improve its tracking and documentation process for decades. The DoD has merely responded by stating that “leadership commitment” is in progress. 

In other words, the Pentagon is getting away with repeatedly failing audits on its nearly trillion-dollar budget while the poorest Americans are about to have to do extra paperwork to get food stamps. 

The best way to safeguard Americans is to invest in life-saving programs such as Medicaid, the CTC, and SNAP. The Pentagon does not need additional funds. Instead, we must hold it accountable for its egregious spending and its auditing failures.

Olabisi Omoniyi-Alake is a Henry Wallace Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies.