Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In early July when the reconciliation bill was signed into law, the Pentagon’s budget exceeded $1 trillion dollars for the first time. In other words, the Pentagon now has a larger budget than it did at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Reagan military buildup, the Vietnam War, or at any time during the Cold War.
To understand if this enormous level of spending will be beneficial or just another Pentagon boondoggle, the Quincy Institute held a panel of leading Pentagon budget experts, including Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center; Veronique de Rugy, the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. Hartung is also co-author of the forthcoming Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. Ben Freeman, fellow book author and director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute, moderated the panel.
The conversation took place on Monday, August 25th from 12:00 - 1:00 PM Eastern Time.
*Download the full webinar transcript here*:
quincyinst.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/25155533/The-Trillion-Dollar-Pentagon-Budget_-Boondoggle-or-Beneficial_.docx-1.pdf
In early July when the reconciliation bill was signed into law, the Pentagon’s budget exceeded $1 trillion dollars for the first time. In other words, the Pentagon now has a larger budget than it did at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Reagan military buildup, the Vietnam War, or at any time during the Cold War.
To understand if this enormous level of spending will be beneficial or just another Pentagon boondoggle, the Quincy Institute held a panel of leading Pentagon budget experts, including Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center; Veronique de Rugy, the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. Hartung is also co-author of the forthcoming Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. Ben Freeman, fellow book author and director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute, moderated the panel.
The conversation took place on Monday, August 25th from 12:00 - 1:00 PM Eastern Time.
*Download the full webinar transcript here*:
quincyinst.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/25155533/The-Trillion-Dollar-Pentagon-Budget_-Boondoggle-or-Beneficial_.docx-1.pdf
