Joyce Weston: A look at the waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon

To The Daily Sun,

According to a recent report from Open the Books, a government watchdog website, the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, blew through $93.4 billion in September 2025 alone, with more than $50 billion going out in the last five days of the month.

The defense budget is huge. And if they don’t spend it all each month, they lose it. So at the end of September, Pentagon officials bought a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home. Guess he’s musical. They spent $5.3 million on Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of shellfish, including $2 million for Alaskan king crab and $6.9 million for lobster tail. Lobster tail seems to be a favorite of Hegseth’s Pentagon — they spent more than $7.4 million total on lobster in March, May, June, and October. They also decided to drop $15.1 million on ribeye steak just in September, $124,000 on ice cream machines, and $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, said in March 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. … The sweat of workers, the genius of scientists, and the hopes of children would be better spent on schools, hospitals, roads, and homes than on armaments. World peace could be achieved not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and by timber and by rice.”

Joyce Weston

Plymouth