Elon Musk is a man on a mission to bring efficiency to our government and probably humans to Mars. He sees the two as connected ventures. Government stopped him from the highest highs of innovation, so he is changing the government.
Most people will recall him drastically reducing staff and eliminating excess costs when he took over Twitter (now X). One of his employees recollected getting a call asking how much the company was paying for janitorial services, as Musk wanted to ensure that X was not paying more than it needed, even to clean toilets.
Critics said the platform would be finished. It’s impossible to run a tech company with such a small staff, they said. How wrong they were. Not only has X continued to function, it has grown and is now more popular than ever. That is how you run a business.
Now, President Trump has asked Mr. Musk to lead the effort to tackle Washington’s bloated bureaucracy through DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency. I have been waiting for something like this my whole life, and so far, the results have been astonishing — and inspiring.
DOGE’s initial forays into smaller government agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development have been remarkably successful, identifying and eliminating billions of dollars of wasteful spending. But if the United States is serious about getting America’s fiscal house in order, one sacred cow can no longer be ignored: the Pentagon.
It’s a $900 billion behemoth, and our budget will continue to run away unless we wrestle it under control. I had a first-row seat to the waste at the Pentagon as an 8-year member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Thankfully, it’s not being overlooked. Last week, DOGE staff met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who welcomed them with open arms.
I’m all for a strong national defense. Advocates of the America First movement like myself aren’t isolationists, after all; we just want the government to do its job without drowning the U.S. in red ink.
As Adm. Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once put it, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” He was right then, and he is still correct today. Excessive spending weakens the U.S.’ economic stability and, over time, its geopolitical influence.
The Pentagon’s budget is now closing in on a trillion dollars a year — more than the next 10 countries combined spend on their own militaries. And we lost the last war we were in to Afghan goat-herders, so we aren’t exactly getting the right bang for our buck.
The simple truth is we can’t balance our federal budget, which is bleeding $1.8 trillion in deficits annually, without tackling this enormous government agency. Defense spending is nearly 15% of all federal outlays and over half of discretionary spending. You don’t fix a leaky ship by mopping the deck — you plug the hole.
We are all aware of the long history of waste and fraud from the Pentagon. Americans were outraged in the 1980s when it was discovered that the military was spending hundreds of dollars for a toilet seat and $20 for a common screw that costs a nickel at the hardware store. Regrettably, however, things haven’t gotten better since then — they have gotten worse.
This past November, the Pentagon failed its annual audit for the seventh time in seven years. It cannot account for how $824 billion was spent. Many of the reasons for such waste lie in some of its purchased weapon systems.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is Exhibit A in government incompetence. It’s the most expensive weapons system in history, with a lifetime cost projected at $1.7 trillion — yes, trillion with a T. The goal was noble: a versatile, high-tech jet for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines.
But the reality has been a boondoggle plagued by delays, cost overruns, and performance issues since day one. Today, a single F-35 aircraft costs over $100 million to buy and only roughly 30% of them are fully operationally capable. That’s failure at an incredibly high cost.
Then there’s the Littoral Combat Ship — another Pentagon misadventure. These “nimble” warships were supposed to cost $220 million apiece. Instead, they’re clocking in at over $600 million each, and the Navy’s already mothballing some because they’re unreliable in a fight.
Many experts say the LCS will never even make it into a meaningful fight and is more likely to end up as the most expensive burial-at-sea coffin for our brave sailors. They deserve better and so do taxpayers.
But it’s not just the big weapons systems that are a problem — it’s also the out-of-control size of the defense bureaucracy.
In 2015, a study found that the Pentagon was bloated and could save $125 billion annually just by identifying administrative waste. At the time, The Washington Post reported, “After the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.” Even after hearing this news, Congress kept rubber-stamping blank checks, too. Why? Because defense contractors have lobbyists, and politicians love jobs in their districts. It’s cronyism, not strategy.
We must do better. This isn’t about gutting defense; it’s about demanding bang for our buck.
We’re $34 trillion in debt, and interest payments alone will soon outpace defense spending. Every dollar we overspend on a jet that doesn’t fly right is a dollar we can’t invest in roads, tax cuts, or heck, your next Mars mission. The Pentagon’s largesse is crowding out everything else.
Don’t buy the scare tactics — cutting waste won’t leave us defenseless. Smarter spending will.
Look at China: They’re building a modern military for a third of our budget. Efficiency, not excess, wins wars. We can’t win wars against China or anyone else with planes that can’t fly combat missions and ships that will be blown from the water before reaching combat.
Donald Trump could not have selected a better person to run DOGE. Musk has the brain and the guts to call out waste where others fear to tread. The budget’s a mess because we’ve let the Pentagon balloon unchecked.
Fixing it will fix the foundation of our fiscal future.
Gaetz is a former U.S. congressman from Florida, where he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee for 8 years, and a former Attorney General nominee from President Donald J. Trump. Presently, Gaetz is the host of The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network.
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