The Pentagon’s $93 Billion September
The steak dinners are not the scandal. The system is.
From our perspective, too much of American political commentary has become a team sport. Viral moments replace serious oversight, lawmakers compete for the sharpest sound bite, and outrage is directed at whichever party happens to hold power at the moment. The incentives reward spectacle far more than governance.
Our focus is on power, stewardship, and democratic accountability: who controls public resources, who oversees them, and what happens when those systems fail.
That brings us to the latest outrage over the Pentagon’s end-of-fiscal-year spending spree.
The headlines are familiar by now. Steak dinners. Lobster tail. Furniture purchases. A Steinway piano. Tens of millions of dollars spent on food. Hundreds of millions spent on furnishings. Social media lit up with anger when watchdog reports revealed that the Department of Defense obligated roughly $93.4 billion in contracts and grants during September 2025, the final month of the federal fiscal year.
The spending itself happened months ago, in the final month of the federal fiscal year. What changed recently was not the spending, but the visibility. Once watchdog analysts compiled the numbers into a single report, the story finally reached the public.
The outrage is understandable, yet it misses the point. The real story is not the ribeye. The real story is the system.
This article continues our ongoing reporting on Pentagon spending and accountability.
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The Annual September Spending Rush
Every federal agency operates under the same basic rule. Money appropriated by Congress for a fiscal year generally must be obligated before that fiscal year ends on September 30. If the money is not spent or contractually committed, the agency risks losing it in the next budget cycle.
That structure creates a powerful incentive. Agencies rush to spend remaining funds before the deadline. In Washington policy circles, the phenomenon is commonly called “use it or lose it” spending. Predictably, the Department of Defense, the largest federal agency by budget, produces the most dramatic version of this pattern.
In September 2025, the Pentagon obligated $93.4 billion in the final month of the fiscal year. Watchdog analyses highlighted some particularly eye-catching purchases. Reports cited roughly $16.6 million spent on ribeye steak, $6 million on lobster tail, and more than $200 million on furniture during the final month.
These details fueled the viral outrage. Yet the September surge itself is not new. It has been happening for decades.
Scale Changes Everything
To understand the scale of the September spending surge, it helps to start with the size of the Pentagon’s overall budget. The $93.4 billion September spending figure sounds enormous. In absolute terms, it is, yet the number becomes even more revealing when placed in context.
The Pentagon’s annual budget now approaches $850 billion. That scale is difficult for most people to visualize. Few institutions anywhere in the world manage budgets of comparable size.
When a system operating at that scale directs roughly 10% of its spending to the final month of the fiscal year, the resulting numbers are staggering. Tens of billions of dollars can move through the system in a matter of weeks.
In relative terms, the final-month spending surge may resemble a household’s discretionary budget for restaurant meals or entertainment. The problem is that the Pentagon’s “household income” is close to a trillion dollars.
The dollar figures grow accordingly.
This Is Not a One-Administration Story
It is tempting to frame the latest spending spree as a scandal tied to whichever administration currently occupies the White House. That framing is politically convenient, but misleading. The September spending surge appears consistently across administrations of both parties.
In September 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term, the Pentagon obligated roughly $59.4 billion in the final month of the fiscal year. In September 2024, near the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the department spent about $79 billion in that same period. In September 2025, during Trump’s current term, the total climbed to $93.4 billion.
The exact figures vary from year to year. The pattern does not.
The most important detail is not simply the dollar amount. The more revealing measure is the share of the Pentagon’s annual budget spent in that final month.
In fiscal year 2019, the Pentagon’s budget was approximately $686 billion. The September spending surge of $59.4 billion accounted for roughly 8.7% of the annual budget.
In fiscal year 2024, the Department of Defense budget approached $842 billion. The September spending spike of $79 billion equaled roughly 9.4% of that total.
In fiscal year 2025, the Pentagon budget hovered around $850 billion, while the final month’s spending reached $93.4 billion. That figure represents roughly 11% of the annual budget.
This is a small sample size, and it would be irresponsible to declare a definitive trend. However, the available numbers suggest that between 8 and 11% of the Pentagon’s annual budget may be swept into the final month of the fiscal year.
Readers will notice that the largest percentage in this sample appears during the current administration. That observation is factually correct. The broader pattern, however, is clearly bipartisan and systemic. The spending surge occurs regardless of which party controls the White House, and the problem appears to be growing in tandem with the budget.
Congress Owns the Incentive Structure
The most striking aspect of the current controversy is how many members of Congress are loudly condemning behavior that Congress itself has the power to change.
Jasmine Crockett, on X
To be clear, I like Jasmine Crockett. However, her viral tweet, while it does add context about the Trump administration’s focus on waste and the austerity of public life, fails to recognize the history of this behavior and the system that has permitted it.
Under the United States Constitution, Congress holds the power of the purse. It has the authority to appropriate federal funds and establish the rules governing how those funds are spent. In practical terms, Congress decides how much money federal agencies receive and under what conditions they may use it.
Congress, in other words, designed the system that produces the annual September spending rush.
Lawmakers could alter that incentive structure if they chose to do so. It could allow a portion of unused funds to roll over into the next fiscal year rather than forcing agencies to spend every remaining dollar before September 30 or place guardrails on how end-of-year funds are used.
In December, we looked at the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill that quietly expands Pentagon spending regardless of performance. The September spending surge described here is the other half of the same system: Congress writes ever-larger checks, while the budgeting rules encourage agencies to burn through whatever remains before the fiscal year ends.
See that reporting here:
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Yet year after year, Congress performs a familiar ritual. When the other party controls the executive branch, lawmakers loudly condemn Pentagon waste. When their own party holds power, the outrage tends to fade. The result is a cycle of political theater in which viral outrage replaces structural reform.
Former President Barack Obama once told campaign crowds, “Don’t boo. Vote.” The equivalent message for Congress might be slightly different. Do not scream about the system. Fix it. Jasmine, I hear you. Now propose legislation to address it and acknowledge that this is a problem across administrations.
The Pentagon’s Long History of Financial Control Problems
The steak dinners dominating social media conversations are not the Pentagon’s most serious fiscal problem. The larger issue is the Department of Defense’s long-standing difficulty in meeting basic financial accountability standards.
The Pentagon has now failed 8 consecutive independent financial audits. The most recent audit review identified 26 “material weaknesses” and 2 “significant deficiencies” in the department’s financial management systems. In the language of government auditing, a material weakness means that internal controls are insufficient to ensure accurate financial reporting.
We have written about the Pentagon’s audit failures before. In May, we examined how the Department of Defense had already failed 7 consecutive audits while operating the federal government's largest discretionary budget. By the end of 2025, that number had climbed to 8. The pattern is no longer surprising. What should be surprising is how little urgency Congress shows in fixing it.
See that article here:
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The Department of Defense manages an extraordinarily complex organization. The department oversees millions of employees, thousands of installations, and trillions of dollars in assets. Complexity alone, however, does not explain the persistent failures.
Government Accountability Office analyses show that divisions responsible for more than half of the Pentagon’s reported assets did not receive clean audit opinions. In other words, those parts of the department could not demonstrate that their financial records were reliable. Auditors also identified what are known as “material weaknesses” in the Pentagon’s financial control systems, serious flaws in the processes used to track property, verify records, and manage accounts. Those weaknesses affect just over half of the department’s total asset base.
To put that in perspective, the Department of Defense reports controlling more than four trillion dollars in assets, including aircraft, ships, weapons systems, bases, and equipment across the globe. The auditors are not reviewing the bookkeeping of a small agency. They are trying to verify one of the largest asset portfolios on Earth.
For us non-accounting folx, imagine a large national warehouse company. Auditors arrive to verify the company’s inventory and discover two problems. First, the warehouses responsible for more than half of the company’s inventory cannot produce reliable inventory records. Second, the company’s inventory tracking system itself contains serious flaws. Even if employees tried to produce accurate records, the inventory-tracking system would still be unreliable. At that point, auditors cannot confidently verify what exists, what is missing, or what condition it is in. That is essentially the situation auditors describe within the Department of Defense… potentially involving weapons.
The consequences extend beyond accounting.
When asset-tracking systems are unreliable, the Pentagon risks purchasing equipment it already owns. When maintenance records are incomplete, the military risks readiness gaps. When procurement systems lack oversight, contractors face fewer consequences for cost overruns and delays.
In that context, the steak dinners are a distraction. The central problem is a financial management system that has struggled for decades to meet basic accountability standards.
Accountability Is Not Anti-Troop
Criticism of Pentagon spending often triggers a predictable response. Critics are accused of undermining the military or failing to support service members.
That framing misunderstands the issue. Supporting troops and demanding fiscal accountability are not competing values. In fact, they reinforce one another.
Short-term morale spending may provide temporary benefits for a small number of personnel. However, long-term investments in military housing, base infrastructure, equipment maintenance, and mental health services have a far greater impact on the daily lives of service members and their families.
When the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions on furniture during the final month of the fiscal year while base housing backlogs remain unresolved, the issue is not patriotism. The issue is prioritization.
Accountability is a form of support. Taxpayers and service members alike benefit when public resources are managed responsibly.
What Reform Could Look Like
Meaningful reform would not require dismantling the defense budget or weakening military readiness. The solutions largely involve adjusting incentives and strengthening oversight.
Step 1
Congress could begin by placing clear guardrails on end-of-fiscal-year spending. Remaining funds could be directed primarily toward infrastructure maintenance, equipment repair, and other known operational needs rather than discretionary purchases.
Congress could also link future budget flexibility to improved financial accountability. If the Pentagon fails to make measurable progress toward passing its audits, lawmakers could temporarily withhold a small percentage of discretionary funding until those deficiencies are addressed.
Step 2
Improving asset tracking would represent another practical step. Inventory management systems across the department could be modernized and standardized so that equipment, parts, and supplies are consistently documented and monitored. Might I only slightly snarkily suggest an influx of librarians, museum curators, and archivists? Imagine a horde of information professionals descending upon the Pentagon. There would be clear policies and procedures, a robust tracking system, and a routine schedule for inventory controls, along with identification metadata, loss-prevention tags, and access logs, within a year. Have bun and cardigan, will travel.
Step 3
Financial officers responsible for budget decisions could also receive mandatory, more rigorous training in public-sector financial controls. In most organizations, repeated audit failures eventually lead to leadership changes or structural reforms. Federal agencies should not be exempt from that expectation. Most importantly, any staggered funding loss would be coupled with explicit conditions prohibiting cuts that impact enlisted personnel. Those who make the financial decisions should feel the impact of poor management, not the staff.
The goal would not be punishment. The goal would be stewardship.
The Real Scandal
The steak dinners and furniture purchases make for compelling headlines and convenient political theater, yet the spectacle obscures the deeper issue.
The Pentagon’s September spending surge is not an isolated scandal tied to a single administration. It is the predictable outcome of a budgeting system that Congress has maintained for decades. It occurs in Republican administrations and Democratic administrations alike.
If lawmakers are serious about fiscal stewardship, the solution does not lie in another round of outraged tweets. The solution lies in reforming the incentives that produce the behavior in the first place.
Until that happens, the next September spending spree will look remarkably similar to this one. So I challenge our elected officials. Prove me wrong. If you are more serious about governance than clicks, draft and pass meaningful reform. Reclaim your power of the purse. We’ll be watching.
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Sources:
OpenTheBooks — “Pentagon Should Focus on Defense Priorities, not Lavish Dinners, After Historic $93.4B ‘Use-It-or-Lose-It’ September”, March 9, 2026.
OpenTheBooks — “Letter to Secretary Hegseth: End ‘Use-It-or-Lose-It’ Spending Sprees This Year”, September 2, 2025.
The Fiscal Times — “The Pentagon’s $93 Billion ‘Use It or Lose It’ September”, March 10, 2026.
People — “Pentagon Went on $93B Spending Spree, Including Several Million for Lobster and Crab: Report”, March 11, 2026.
The Daily Beast — “Newsom Savages Pentagon Pete Over Lobster and Steak Splurge”, March 10, 2026.
The New Republic — “Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab”, March 9, 2026.
DoD News / Joint Chiefs — “President’s Fiscal 2019 Defense Budget Request Calls for $686.1 Billion”, February 12, 2018.
Department of Defense — “Statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the President’s Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Budget”, March 9, 2023.
Department of Defense — “Department of Defense Releases the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Budget”, March 11, 2024.
Reuters — “Pentagon says it fails eighth audit, targets 2028 to pass”, December 19, 2025.
DoD Office of Inspector General — “Press Release: Independent Auditor’s Reports on the DoD FY 2025 Financial Statements”, December 19, 2025.
Government Accountability Office — “DOD Financial Management: Insights into the Auditability of DOD’s Fiscal Year 2024 Balance Sheet”, September 18, 2025.
National Bureau of Economic Research — “Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement”, September 2013.
NBER Digest — “Use-It-or-Lose-It Budget Rules”, March 1, 2014.
Constitution Annotated / Congress.gov — “Overview of Appropriations Clause”
U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian — “Power of the Purse”
Government Accountability Office — “Military Housing: DOD Should Address Critical Supply and Affordability Challenges for Service Members”, October 30, 2024.
It’s important to have a fiscally responsible government accountable to the taxpayers whose funds are meant to be handled honestly and not squandered or misused by dishonest legislators.
Nobody wastes money like The Pentagon, well except The Fapweasel (Trump)!