Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday that his department cut $580 million in “wasteful spending.”
The Department of Government Efficiency is currently auditing federal departments, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seem to agree that defense spending is a problem, given that the Pentagon has failed six consecutive audits.
“So today, I’m signing a memo directing the termination of over $580 million in DoD contracts, in grants, that do not match the priorities of this president or this department. In other words, they are not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, that’s who funds us,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X. “We’re going to keep going for you guys.”
The latest cuts and those announced weeks ago total $800 million saved. Among the terminated contracts were one for HR software that was meant for just a year but instead extended to eight years and costing $280 million more than anticipated, a plan to decarbonize emissions of Navy ships that would have cost $6 million, contracts with consulting firms that totaled $30 million, an effort to diversify the Navy for $5.2 million, and a $9 million effort toward “equitable AI.”
“I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth has laid off thousands of probationary employees and offered a deferred resignation program for the department’s civilian employees. The secretary’s goal was a 5% to 8% reduction in civilian staff, but he only reached about a third of that.
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Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, recommended in his final days in office that the incoming administration spend $50 billion more on defense. Austin’s five-year spending plan included a projection to spend as much as $1 trillion on defense as soon as 2028.
The most recent budget passed by Congress slated $892.5 billion for defense spending, which is $8 billion more than in 2024.