Pentagon’s $93 Billion September Spending Draws Scrutiny and Satire
A recent report on U.S. Defense Department expenditures has ignited a firestorm of criticism and late-night comedy, spotlighting millions in spending on luxury food items and furnishings during a single month. The analysis, published by the government spending watchdog Open the Books, revealed that the Pentagon under Secretary Pete Hegseth disbursed approximately $93 billion in September. The breakdown includes eyebrow-raising allocations such as $6.9 million on lobster tails, $1.5 million on ribeye steaks, $140,000 on donuts, and $124,000 on ice cream machines. The spending also encompassed a grand piano and significant Apple product purchases, alongside $225.6 million for furniture.
Comedians Highlight Lavish Purchases and Rhetoric
The figures became fodder for prominent late-night hosts, who juxtaposed the spending with Secretary Hegseth’s previously stated hawkish foreign policy views. On his show, Jimmy Kimmel expressed concern over what he characterized as Hegseth’s enthusiasm for military action. “I think one of the things that’s most troubling about this is how excited Pete Hegseth gets to bomb people,” Kimmel remarked. “Like he would do it even if he wasn’t getting paid. Just for the love of it. Just for the hell of it. But he is getting paid and he’s spending a lot of money.”
Kimmel specifically mocked the scale of food purchases, comparing the reports to a reality TV show about overeating. “What is this? ‘My 600 Pound Defense Department?’” he quipped, before imagining the hypothetical conservative media outrage if a Democratic official had made similar expenditures. He also tied the spike in furniture costs—reportedly higher than the combined total of the previous decade—to a joke about Vice President JD Vance’s personal use of government property.
Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show focused on the procurement of $12,000 fruit basket stands. “Wait, you’re ordering what?” he asked the audience. “You’re ordering fruit baskets so fancy they come with a stand?” Colbert then offered a sarcastic alternative, suggesting officials simply bring a clementine to work. The audience’s audible groans over the shellfish and steak costs prompted Colbert to joke, “They’re just harkening back to our founders. As Paul Revere declared on his famous ride, ‘One if by surf, two if by turf!’”
Watchdog Group Links Spending to ‘Use-It-or-Lose-It’ Culture
Open the Books’ CEO, John Hart, connected the September spending surge to a perennial issue in federal budgeting: the pressure to exhaust annual appropriations before the fiscal year ends to avoid future budget cuts. In a statement accompanying the report, Hart noted the contradiction between Secretary Hegseth’s stated mission to refocus the Pentagon on “warfighting and lethality” and the reality of year-end waste. “Last year, we highlighted the problem of wasteful use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending,” Hart wrote. “We noted that this reform is fully within the secretary’s control and is a historic opportunity to make good on that promise.”
The report contextualizes the $93 billion September outlay as part of a broader pattern. The $225
