Andre Damon@Andre__Damon6 hours ago
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s plan to increase military spending by 50 percent, from $1 trillion this year to $1.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2027.
Hegseth, who has rebranded the Pentagon as “the Department of War,” told the committee the budget would put the defense industrial base “back on a wartime footing.”
The request is the sharpest single-year jump in US military spending in the postwar era. It would lift outlays to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, with House Republican leaders calling for 5 percent as the eventual target.
The buildup is preparation for war with nuclear-armed China and Russia, the two states Trump’s National Defense Strategy names as principal adversaries.
In the face of a broadly unpopular administration openly stating its intent to commit war crimes in pursuit of global domination, the Democrats on the committee made it their highest priority to emphasize—despite tactical disagreements—their solidarity with the Trump administration’s megalomaniacal program of world conquest.
Democratic ranking member Adam Smith of Washington opened by expressing his sympathy with the Iran war and with the 50 percent surge in military spending. “I think we should all recognize that our troops deserve nothing but our praise for the incredible job that they have done,” Smith told Hegseth. “We have demonstrated to the world that we have a highly capable military, and I hear the chairman on the need for an increased” budget.
Smith then condemned the mass popular opposition to the war. “I strongly disagree with the folks on the far left who say that we don’t really face any threats, that the US is a malign influence in the world and always has been. I don’t agree with that,” Smith said. “China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis,” he continued, “They want to push us aside.”
Republican Don Bacon of Nebraska summed up the bipartisan consensus for global war. “We are the most bipartisan committee out of 20 in Congress. We have a tradition of voting on NDAAs with large, large majorities year after year,” Bacon said. “And it’s important not to be a Republican first in here or a Democrat first. We’re Americans trying to ensure that our country is well defended. And in that spirit, I compliment the operations in Iran.”
Bacon is correct about the bipartisanship of the war drive. The Democrats funded the buildup before the Iran war began and refused to halt it once it was under way. The House passed the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act on December 10, 2025, by 312 to 112, with the entire Democratic House leadership voting yes; the Senate followed 77 to 20. On January 22, 2026, the House cleared an $839 billion defense appropriations bill 341 to 88. On February 2, 21 House Democrats supplied the margin for a continuing resolution to keep the government funded; the same day, a US F-35 from the USS Abraham Lincoln shot down an Iranian drone over the Arabian Sea. Twenty-six days later, the US-Israeli assault on Iran began. Once it had, both chambers voted down War Powers Act resolutions to stop it.
The plan’s largest line item, $71 billion, would massively expand the US nuclear arsenal—new ballistic-missile submarines, long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles aimed at China and Russia. Shipbuilding receives $65 billion. Bombs and conventional missiles get $25 billion. The “Golden Dome” missile-defense program is funded at $22 billion. The Space Force budget doubles. Procurement rises 76 percent and research and development 64 percent. Another $54.6 billion is earmarked for a Defense Autonomous Warfare Group to wage drone war, most of it contingent on a future reconciliation bill.
Hegseth said the budget would put 14 munitions production lines on a sustained wartime tempo—Patriot, PAC-3, THAAD, Tomahawk, AMRAAM and JASSM missiles among them—with companies offered multi-year demand signals to expand their factories. The active-duty force grows by 44,000 troops. The Pentagon claims to have triggered more than $50 billion in private investment, 280 new factories and 18 million square feet of American manufacturing floorspace. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine called the budget “a historic down payment on future security.”
Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama, chair of the House committee, framed the request around preparation for war with China. “China builds 47% of the world’s ships. The US builds one-tenth of 1%. We build fewer ships than Croatia or the Netherlands,” Rogers said. The Chinese military, he added, has become “a modernized military force capable of projecting power well into the Pacific.”
Caine said the Pentagon was reviewing “all three legs of the nuclear triad”—submarines, missiles and bombers—to make sure they were “reliable, redundant, and workable” for, in his words, “our nation’s most important day.” Hegseth warned the committee that “the country that dominates in quantum will dominate the future in C2, in comms, in every way that we fight.” Bacon called for a nuclear buildup expressly aimed at Beijing: “Russia, China needs to know no matter what they do, we can launch those 400 ICBMs.”
The defense secretary spoke the vocabulary of a crime boss. He said the spending would build a military that “instills nothing less than unrelenting fear in our adversaries.” He cited the year’s operations as proof. “That matters when you go 37 hours around the world for Midnight Hammer,” he said, referring to the June 2025 B-2 bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. “That matters when you go downtown in Venezuela and grab the indicted dictator of a country in the middle of the night.” Russian air defenses sent to protect Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before his January 3 abduction, Hegseth said, “were defeated in 15 minutes.”
Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts questioned Hegseth over his March 13 press conference order to give boats in the Caribbean “no quarter, no mercy.” Moulton, a former Marine Corps officer with four combat tours in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, said, “An order for no quarter or no survivors is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.” Hegseth did not retract the order. “The Department of War fights to win,” he replied.
Wednesday’s hearing made clear that the war on Iran is one phase of a global war the American ruling class is preparing for control of the world.
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