Social insurance and earned benefit programs will touch nearly all Americans during their lifetimes, as most people draw Social Security when they retire or rely on government funded medical care in old age. In 2015, the U.S. will spend $900.5 billion on Social Security alone.
Trump's FY 2027 Pentagon budget request includes $95 billion for munitions, which - if passed - would be 20% more than the U.S. Department of Education’s entire 2026 discretionary budget. Each of the missiles the Department of War wants to produce cost millions of taxpayer dollars. To break down the enormity of these per-unit costs, we provide examples of social programs that could be funded for the price of a single PrSM, Tomahawk, and THAAD missile, sourced from the National Priorities Project’s trade-off calculator.
As the first year of Trump’s second term comes to a close, here are ten examples of MAGA’S excessive, wasteful, inhumane, and unstrategic militarized spending in 2025.
Instead of more funding for weapons and war, Americans deserve a government that supports them when times are tough. In fact, the cost to provide Medicaid to 14 million Americans at risk of losing their insurance AND provide SNAP benefits to the 3.5 million who have already lost benefits amounts to less than the Pentagon’s $156 billion bonus – just $116 billion.
Deploying the National Guard against D.C.’s unhoused population costs four times more than simply housing them. And that’s true across the country.
