The Big, Beautiful Belch

Despite describing himself as a “fiscal hawk,” President Donald Trump asked for an additional $113 billion for the Department of Defense in his discretionary budget request. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, appropriates $37 billion more for defense spending than Trump requested. While some of this money may go to projects integral to national security, much of it is expensive pork for defense contractors.

The bill, if passed by the Senate, would add an estimated $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. It would appropriate an additional $150 billion to the Defense Department’s already-bloated $848 billion budget, bringing the agency’s account to nearly $1 trillion in FY 2026. The additional appropriations in the bill from the Committee on Armed Services, which oversees Pentagon spending, span 37 pages, 16 sections, and 232 items.

In the air, over $500 million will go to Air Force exercises in the Pacific, a rather expensive way to saber-rattle with China. Nearly $1 billion will be allocated to “accelerate” production of the FA/XX aircraft and the F-47, which Trump touted as the “Next Generation Air Dominance” platform that will be “the most advanced, capable, and lethal aircraft ever built.” But investing this much in another manned aircraft seems anachronistic while appropriating more than $10 billion for unmanned aerial weapons systems such as General Atomics’ YFQ-42A and Anduril’s YFQ-44A, autonomous one-way attack systems, unmanned surface and underwater weapons systems, and other artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities.

At sea, the federal government will allocate more than $5 billion to the American shipbuilding industrial base, which the Jones Act has hollowed out. This century-old law requires all ships transporting goods between U.S. ports to be American-built, American-owned, and crewed by U.S. citizens. The bill also appropriates a combined $16 billion for a Virginia-class submarine, two guided missile destroyers, a San Antonio–class Amphibious Transport Dock, and another amphibious assault ship. (The Navy already has 23, 75, 13, and 12 of these, respectively.) About $3 billion will be given to the Defense Department to purchase T-AO oilers to help fuel the Navy’s fleet of roughly 280 ships.

The Pentagon has failed each of the seven audits it has submitted to the department’s inspector general since it began doing so in 2017—more than 25 years after Congress passed a law requiring agencies to investigate their own finances, Reason’s Joe Lancaster explains. While the bill has not yet been signed into law, the Senate is unlikely to alter military appropriations significantly.

Giving the Pentagon even more money while it can’t account for its expenditures does not make the country safer; it rewards incompetence and waste.

But it’s these particular type of government pinheads who have the foresight to know just what that kind of money can buy:

US Has Delivered 90,000 Tons of Weapons to Israel in Nearly 600 Days – antiwarnews.com

The US has delivered 90,000 tons of bombs, guns, and other military equipment to Israel since October 7, 2023, to support the genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to numbers from the Israeli Defense Ministry.

The Defense Ministry said Tuesday that the 800th plane carrying US weapons arrived in Israel in the morning, and 140 ships have also delivered US equipment in the nearly 600 days since October 7.

The ministry stated that the military equipment has included “armored vehicles, munitions, ammunition, personal protection gear, and medical supplies” and that the US support is “a significant component” in ensuring the Israeli military can continue the slaughter in Gaza.

Israeli military officials have previously said that without US military support, Israel wouldn’t be able to sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that without US backing, Israel wouldn’t be able to achieve its goals in Gaza, which include the complete destruction of the territory and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.

US deliveries to Israel continue despite reports of friction between President Trump and Netanyahu. While Trump has claimed he wants to see a ceasefire in Gaza, there’s no indication that he is willing to force Israel to agree to a deal with Hamas by leveraging military aid.

Meanwhile, daily Israeli atrocities in Gaza continue, which have taken a huge toll on women and children. Gaza’s Health Ministry recently published a list of the names of 16,506 children that the US has helped Israel kill in Gaza, a number that’s likely a significant undercount.

Meanwhile, Demolition Don is miffed and pissed:

President Donald Trump said Sunday that Vladimir Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY,” after the Russian leader launched the largest aerial attack of Moscow’s three-year full-scale war on Ukraine.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Trump posted on Truth Social. – cnn.com

Doesn’t matter that the agent of chaos has recently extinguished a number of civilian lives in Yemen during the failed campaign in that country.  It only cost over $1 Billion in just two months, so the U.S. got some bang for its’ billions.