More: Technically, officially, Mr. Hegseth's $1.5 trillion was a budget request, and it had thousands of pages of figures and line items to go with it. But what's even more astonishing than its size is that it wasn't really a budget, not in the way you or I would think of it.
The word "budget" ordinarily implies picking among options, living within your means. Earlier military budgets, even the most gigantic ones, made trade-offs " canceled weapons programs, deferred maintenance, smaller fighting forces, to name a few. Mr. Hegseth's plan avoids those choices almost entirely.
It would funnel more money to the traditional military contractors that Mr. Hegseth previously called out for feasting on a wasteful, bloated system. It would bankroll President Trump's weirdly retro military wish list. On top of all that, Mr. Hegseth has asked Congress for $350 billion that would come with far less oversight or accountability than the rest of the sum. And that's before the bill for the Iran war comes due; the Pentagon estimates it has cost $29 billion so far, up from an estimate of $25 billion a few weeks ago.
"They're just doing an all-of-the-above approach," says Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the traditionally right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, so that they "don't have to make difficult choices."
Mr. Hegseth's team says it needs flexibility in order to keep up with the head-snapping pace of change in technology but promises the budget will be "fiscally responsible." Angus King, the usually hawkish independent senator from Maine, said that a quarter of the budget was "essentially a slush fund." It's a giant blank check with "Trust me" penciled in. So let me ask you: How much do you trust Pete Hegseth?
