Pentagon Should Focus on Defense Priorities, not Lavish Dinners, After Historic $93.4B “Use-It-or-Lose-It” September

Defense officials typically enter the end of each fiscal year with at least one goal in mind: spend the rest of the military’s budget by any means necessary. Otherwise, “use-it-or-lose-it” funding rules force the Pentagon to forfeit its unused money and potentially see reduced funding next year.

Open the Books has tracked the annual September spending bonanza for nearly a decade. Military spending has spiked every year, regardless of which party controlled the White House.

However, there has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent on grants and contracts. Since at least 2008 — and presumably in history — no federal agency has ever spent so much on grants and contracts in a single month.

In the last five working days of September alone, the DoD spent $50.1 billion on grants and contracts. That’s more than the annual defense budget of countries like Israel and Italy. In fact, there are only nine foreign countries that spend that much on their military in an entire year!

These amounts only include money sent to entities outside the government, not salaries for service members and scores of other expenses.

Instead, the shopping spree encompasses luxury food items like lobster, high-end furniture and rushed IT purchases.

Open the Books has covered use-it-or-lose-it spending for years. In 2025 we called on Secretary Hegseth to rein it in because, of the dozens of areas of fiscal concern at the Pentagon, this may be the easiest problem to correct:

“Mr. Secretary, you have the power to end this practice today. We urge you to do so as you pursue your goal of reorientating DOD around its central warfighting and lethality mission.”

This year, as more kinetic action has kicked off in Iran and across the Gulf states, it’s time for the Pentagon to focus on replenishing critical items like defensive missile and drone interceptors, not fancy appetizers.

Protecting the Nation in Comfort

Furniture is near the top of the military’s wish list at the end of every fiscal year. Since 2008, the DoD has spent an average of $257.6 million on furniture every September — a 564% increase above the norm. In months besides September, furniture costs the military only $38.8 million on average.

This year was no different. The DoD spent $225.6 million on furniture, the most since 2014. Nearly half was labeled as “office furniture.”

The purchases included $60,719 worth of chairs from the premium furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, including at least one order of their luxurious Aeron Chair for $1,844. Another $12,540 paid for three-tiered fruit basket stands.

Furniture spending today is far lower than in President Obama’s administration, when the military routinely spent $300 to $400 million every September. However, it has increased compared to Joe Biden’s administration. Since 2008, there have only been four Septembers when the DoD spent less than $178 million on furniture: the four Septembers that Biden was president.

To be fair, federal office buildings were closed during part of Biden’s administration due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The whole federal government still somehow managed to drop $3.3 billion on furniture from 2020 to 2022, including solar-powered picnic tables and Ethan Allen leather recliners.

---

---

Military Munchies

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the military in a speech on Sept. 30 that it is “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Hegseth took notice of his employees’ weight at the end of September. Military personnel spent the month dining in luxury.

The Pentagon spent $2 million on Alaskan king crab in September. It’s the fifth time the Pentagon under Donald Trump has spent $2 million or more on king crab in a single month: twice during his first term and three times in 2025. It’s only happened one other month in history (February 2021).

Fortune magazine recently declared that king crab has taken caviar’s place as the “hottest luxury ingredient.” One seafood merchant explains that “king crab isn’t a budget buy” due to its “remote harvesting” and “labor-intensive handling.”

The military also bought $6.9 million of lobster tail this September. Again, it was not an isolated incident; it’s been a theme of Hegseth’s spending so far.

In 2025, the DoD spent more than $7.4 million on lobster tail in four separate months: March, May, June and October. That had previously only happened once in history (October 2024).

September 2025 also saw the Pentagon purchase:

• $15.1 million of ribeye steak

• $1 million of salmon

• 272 orders of doughnuts for $139,224

• $124,000 for ice cream machines

• $26,000 for sushi preparation tables

IT and Telecom

The Pentagon spent $5.9 billion on Information Technology and telecommunications in September. That included $3.5 billion for services like technical support and cable television, the fourth-most ever in a single month.

It also includes $2.4 billion worth of IT-related goods, including laptops and software licenses. The broken “product and service code” search feature on USAspending.gov makes it impossible to compare that figure to other months.

Use-it-or-lose-it spending on IT has been studied for years. Research in the American Economic Review found that from 2004 to 2009, the federal government spent 23% of its IT budget just in the last week of September.

The frenzy of spending had drastic consequences. Those same IT purchases were 5.7 times more likely to receive a “low quality” score from government chief information officers, based on their cost and usefulness to the government.

Salesmen have taken note. The Hewlett-Packard computer company gave its employees the following instructions in September 2024:

“Did you know that 8.7% of federal government spending will occur in this last week? That’s five times the normal weekly rate! Contact your government customers and take advantage of the federal spending rush. Stock up now to get your share of the ‘use it or lose it’ funds.”

Prime Day

Mike Weiland — the CEO of Govly, an AI company that aids government contractors — says Sept. 30 is like “Amazon Prime Day” for the federal government.

“Any company that spends less than it makes or is allocated will be seen as efficient, effective, and valuable in the market. However, this is different with the government,” Weiland wrote.

“If a government agency doesn’t spend its allocated budget funds over the course of the fiscal year, they no longer have access to those funds in the next year … The loss of their surplus funds, combined with the threat of a decline in future funding, is a recipe for serious fear amongst government agencies. Hence why they hit the panic button in August and September to spend.”

Business consultants at OST Global Solutions advise clients to “take advantage” of Washington’s rushed September spending, which they attribute to bureaucrats’ “procrastination.” OST recommends planning “an aggressive sales campaign during the fourth quarter” because “this time of year, the government contracting specialists are swamped. Many are working late and on weekends. There are some things that you should do to help them along.”

The Pentagon’s spending records support those claims. In September 2025, defense officials bought $5.3 million of Apple devices, including 400 of the new iPad Air M3 for $315,200. The same iPad with 128 gigabytes of storage is available online for just $499, but the DoD opted for the more expensive 512 gigabyte edition at a rate of $788 each.

Another $4 million was spent on Samsung products, including a 98-inch monitor with “crystal UHD display” for $4,000.

Musical instruments cost $1.8 million. That included a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, a $26,000 violin, and a $21,750 custom handmade flute from the luxury Japanese brand Muramatsu.

Just for good measure, the Pentagon dropped another $111,497 on footrests and $3,160 on stickers featuring Dora the Explorer, Frozen, Paw Patrol and more.

All that purchasing work must have left a big mess, because the garbage collection cost $19.3 million.

Make Foreign Manufacturing Great Again

Trump has made increasing American manufacturing a central part of his economic agenda, including placing tariffs on foreign goods. The Pentagon has not been doing its part.

The DoD made a record $6.6 billion of purchases from foreign governments and foreign-owned businesses in September, breaking the previous high of $5.2 billion from September 2023. Top recipients included the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Canada.

That included $3 billion for services including training classes, janitorial work and border surveillance — some of which were needed for overseas military bases and could only be purchased from international companies.

But there was also $3.6 billion of goods produced by foreign-owned companies or governments, including firetrucks, motors and computer chips. Of those goods, $1.4 billion were manufactured abroad and $2.2 billion were manufactured in the U.S.

Additionally, the DoD bought $252.3 million of products from American-owned businesses that manufactured the supplies overseas, such as forklifts, microscopes, and radios.

There was no money sent to adversarial countries like China or Russia, but that has not always been the case. From 2017 to 2023, the military made $51.6 million of purchases from China, including $6 million for tech support of “deployment and distribution command” software. It was part of $1.3 billion the federal government sent to China and Russia in that timeframe.

Conclusion

Use-it-or-lose-it spending is not unique to the Pentagon. The General Services Administration routinely doubles its purchases every September, and State Department spending often increases by five times. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $1.4 billion this September, nearly double any other month in history.

But the effect is magnified at the DoD because of its massive budget, which accounts for more than half of all discretionary spending. Since 2008, the DoD has spent $62.4 billion on grants and contracts in an average September, but an average of $28.9 billion in other months.

The federal government had a $1.8 trillion deficit in 2025. Even completely eliminating non-defense discretionary spending would have only reduced the deficit by 40%. It will be impossible to balance the budget without cuts to defense, Medicare, Social Security, or some combination.

Trump has called for the DoD budget to increase from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion by 2027, which would make a balanced budget even more infeasible.

Before committing to such a drastic funding boost, Congress should consider allowing the DoD to roll over portions of its budget to the following year instead of wasting money on seafood and pianos every September. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that funding “to raise and support armies” can be used up to two years after it is appropriated. The current one-year deadline is arbitrary and must be re-examined.

---

Your support makes our work at Open the Books possible! Please consider a donation of any amount to help us keep investigating government waste, fraud and abuse.

---