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Hegseth: Defense and Fiscal Hawks, Unite!

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Hegseth: Defense and Fiscal Hawks, Unite!

June 23, 2026 | By Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War

Urgency, speed, efficiency, competition and lethality: These are the new guiding principles of our War Department.

This moment requires defense hawks and fiscal hawks to pull together, and I'm proud to call myself both.

Our growing national debt is indeed a threat.

That's evident to me as a taxpayer and as a Cabinet secretary; so, unlike Pentagons of the past, we're leading the way on fiscal discipline, spending taxpayer dollars wisely.

Yet, the single greatest threat to America's national security today is under-investment in military spending.

If America loses our unquestioned military edge, no amount of fiscal austerity can maintain this nation's economic health.

That's why President Donald J. Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion fiscal year 2027 defense budget, a generational investment in cutting-edge military advantage, is my department's No. 1 priority.

Our job, in conjunction with Congress, is to stop at nothing — between the base budget, a supplemental request and a reconciliation package — to ensure we deliver on the commander in chief's vision for American defense dominance: a common-sense, prioritized, America-first military.

The future of America's economic and fiscal health depends on it.

The American people can be forgiven for taking the military aspect of our economic engine for granted.

For decades, the Pentagon has quietly underwritten the foundation of American prosperity — from the dominance of the U.S. dollar to the stability of borrowing costs to the protection of global trade.

It's not the Treasury Department alone that keeps the dollar stable; it's also the U.S. Air Force.

It's not the Federal Reserve alone that determines interest rates; it's also the U.S. Marine Corps.

It's not the Commerce Department alone that maintains free trade; it's also the U.S. Navy.

It's prosperity through strength, and the economic consequences of having the world's strongest military safeguard economic stability, predictability and American advantage are almost endless.

When America is unchallenged militarily, economic possibilities abound: We borrow cheaply, transact freely and set the terms of global trade. 

Without that military power, all this becomes uncertain — because instability and volatility do vast damage to markets, investments and ultimately American jobs.

As other nations, notably China, are undertaking historic military buildups, we must rebuild a military degraded under anemic Biden defense budgets, while investing heavily in cutting-edge capabilities.

The domains of space, subsea, cyber, artificial intelligence, autonomy and long-range strike will determine future battlefields — and will, in turn, determine our economic and fiscal prospects.

My department has been briefing every member of Congress on the urgent nature of global threats and about how this once-in-a-lifetime budget not only meets those threats but surpasses them.

Militarily — matching capability to threats — the president's defense budget meets the moment, and the same goes for our department's fiscal efforts. 

The Pentagon has never before passed a comprehensive financial audit, the only major U.S. federal agency to have never done so.

Worse, the Pentagon has never cared to pass an audit.

No longer. The War Department is now on track to pass an audit by 2028, years sooner than expected.

We made it a priority from Day 1, and the process is forcing every corner of the Pentagon to go line by line with exacting detail.

Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg spent the past year going through every line of the budget, gaining a granular understanding of our balance sheet.

This never-before-done, grinding review enabled us to streamline our budget by dramatically reducing non-priority spending, exposing billions in redundancies.

It allowed us to shift tens of billions of dollars to our highest-priority missions.

Finally, we've completely flipped our departmentwide acquisitions approach from a bureaucratic process to a business performance.

We hired world-class businesspeople to cut deals that put the department and the taxpayers first.

In exchange for longer-term orders, defense contractors are now investing their own private capital in new manufacturing plants and assembly lines — putting hundreds of thousands of Americans to work and saving our department tens of billions.

Our warfighters will get the weapons, platforms and technology they need ahead of schedule — tomorrow's weapons today, not yesterday's weapons tomorrow.

Our newest programs are now ahead of schedule and under budget, and we've got legacy programs moving years faster.

Large defense contractors understand they must adapt to this new business approach, or we'll replace them.

New companies now compete on a level platform.

When I was in uniform, I can recall hearing Admiral Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly say: "America's national debt is the single greatest threat to our national security."

Admiral Mullen was right — well, half right.

The national debt is incredibly important, but fiscally responsible defense spending is even more so.

We can, and must, do both.

That starts when Congress' defense and fiscal hawks unite — and pass the president's historic defense budget.

The Honorable Pete Hegseth is the secretary of war. He was sworn in on Jan. 25, 2025, as the 29th secretary of defense before the department's name was changed on Sept. 5, 2025.

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