(DCNF)—The Pentagon spent an historic $93 billion on grants and contracts just in September in 2025, according to a new report obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
According to the report, produced by government watchdog Open The Books (OTB), the Department of War (DoW) has not seen a level of spending at the end of a fiscal year so high since at least 2008. The Department spent over $50 billion on grants and contracts in the last five business days of September alone—spending that Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst chalks up to “binge-buying bureaucrats.”
Every September, Pentagon officials look for ways to spend the remainder of the military’s budget in order to avoid forfeiting unused money and facing reduced funding in the future under federal “use-it-or-lose-it” rules. OTB, which has tracked the Pentagon’s annual spending for nearly a decade, sent a letter asking War Secretary Pete Hegseth to reorient the department “around its central warfighting and lethality mission.” Despite this, the group says “there has never been anything” like September 2025.
Furniture typically tops the Pentagon’s wish list at the end of each fiscal year, and 2025 was no exception. Government data shows the Department spent over $225 million on furniture, the highest since 2014. Officials spent a notable $12,000 on fruit basket stands in September 2025, and over $60,000 just on premium Herman Miller chairs.
President Donald Trump’s Pentagon has spent considerably less on furniture each September than the $300 to $400 million routinely spent over the course of former President Barack Obama’s first several years. Biden-era officials, despite being out of office for extended periods due to the COVID pandemic, still managed to spend a staggering $3 billion on furniture between 2020 and 2022.
The DoW also enjoyed a generous food budget in September 2025. According to the report, the Pentagon purchased $2 million worth of Alaskan king crab, a massive end-of-fiscal year feat accomplished five times across Trump’s tenure.
September was a low point in the Pentagon’s lobster tail spending, with just under $7 million worth of lobster tail purchased in September compared to $7.4 million across March, May, June and October. But officials did drop over $130,000 on donuts, $1 million on salmon and $15.1 million on ribeye steak.
The DoW spent nearly $6 billion on information technology (IT) in the month of September, including $3.5 billion for cable TV and technical support — the fourth-highest amount ever in one month, according to the report — and $2.4 billion in goods like laptops and software licenses. Officials also purchased millions of dollars in technology from Big Tech giants, including $5.3 million for Apple devices and $4 million on Samsung monitors and other devices.
Musical instruments made their way into the budget as well. A $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano, a $26,000 violin and a $21,750 handmade Japanese flute were among the $1.8 million spent on instruments in September.
The Pentagon also made purchases totaling $6.6 billion from foreign governments and businesses, over $1 billion more than the previous record of $5.2 billion during September 2023. Those expenditures included $3 billion for training classes, janitorial work and border surveillance, and $3.6 billion worth of goods such as computer chips and firetrucks. Of that total, $2.2 billion of the products were made in the USA, while $1.4 billion were produced abroad, according to the report.
Trump called for Congress to raise the Pentagon’s budget from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2027 in a Truth Social post in January. He wrote that this budget would “allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to.”
The first 100 hours of Operation Epic Fury is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $900 million per day, for a total of $3.7 billion — over 25-times the amount spent by the Pentagon last September — according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). Although Hegseth has confirmed the Pentagon will shift to producing lower-cost munitions, CSIS reports that $3.5 billion of the campaign’s expenses are not budgeted.
“Under Secretary Hegseth, the Pentagon has consistently said its mission is to refocus on warfighting and lethality,” OTB CEO John Hart told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Last year, we highlighted the problem of wasteful use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending. We noted that this reform is fully within the secretary’s control and is a historic opportunity to make good on that promise.”
Hart called the Pentagon’s most recent spending bonanza “unacceptable.”
“Unfortunately, the Pentagon’s traditional year-end spending spree in 2025 was the worst ever on record at a staggering $93.4 billion,” Hart said. “This is unacceptable. American taxpayers expect their dollars to support critical defense priorities, not lavish dinners.”
“Moreover, careless spending emboldens our enemies and puts American lives at risk. We need to focus on replenishing interceptors, not appetizers. American taxpayers voted for change and expect better results,” he added.
Republican Iowa Senator Joni Ernst said the DoW should be able to defend “how every dollar is being spent.”
“If taxpayers are going to be asked to spend $1.5 trillion on defense—nearly as much as the rest of the world combined—Washington must be able to defend how every dollar is being spent,” Ernst told the DCNF. “Open the Books’ findings that binge-buying bureaucrats at the Pentagon burned through tens of billions of dollars on impulse purchases, like fruit basket stands, footrests, doughnuts by the dozen, and a custom-made flute, demonstrate how much work still needs to be done to meet that goal.”
Ernst, in an effort to “empower the Trump administration to win the war on waste,” introduced the Reviewing Every Check and Each Invoice Purchasing Troops’ Supplies (RECEIPTS) Act in early February, which Ernst says would require a “clean audit” of the Pentagon by 2028. Ernst also told the DCNF she would be introducing a bill in late February to “end the ‘Christmas in September’ shopping spree at every government agency.”
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