Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
In an era of high prices for fuel, food, and housing, an extra $4,000 could make a life-saving difference for many families. But instead, that’s what the average household had to shell out for the Pentagon last year.
That’s right: The average U.S. taxpayer in 2025 had over $4,000 taken out of their paychecks to fund the Pentagon, according to the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. In the coming years, that amount is set to rise as Congress considers a $1.5 trillion war budget for 2027.
For the growing number of working poor in the United States, that money can mean the difference between making rent or falling behind, or between being able to afford an emergency trip to the doctor or going without care.
Money directed to the Pentagon represents nothing but betrayal for many Americans. A large majority oppose our wars, especially the latest conflict in Iran. And roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget flows to for-profit contractors, fueling the billionaire (and now even trillionaire) class.
Take SpaceX, one of many companies built on government contracts funded by taxpayer dollars. Elon Musk’s company would not exist without U.S. taxpayers. As early Tesla investor Ross Gerber put it, “There would not be (Tesla and SpaceX) if it weren’t for the government.”
Early investments and contracts from the U.S. government helped propel SpaceX to success, while continued awards from the Pentagon provided the stable revenue that made the government one of Musk’s largest customers. The company is now valued at more than $1 trillion. Private investors alone did not make Musk a trillionaire — taxpayers across the United States did.
But Musk isn’t the only person who made himself rich off the backs of American workers.
Lockheed Martin receives over 70 percent of its revenue from U.S. government contracts. The numbers for Raytheon and General Dynamics are similar. These military contractors simply would not exist without the taxpayers — and a new $1.5 trillion budget would send hundreds of billions of dollars more to people who already have more than most Americans could even conceptualize.
At the same time, while taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex, the jobs those industries are allegedly providing are in decline, with the war industry creating over 2 million fewer jobs than it did forty years ago.
Worse still, under the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” Republicans passed a year ago, the money for these ever-rising Pentagon budgets comes directly from SNAP, Medicaid, and other programs that help Americans make ends meet.
Under those cuts, millions of Americans — including children — have lost SNAP benefits already. And that’s impacting not just families but the farmers who helped feed them.
SNAP benefits were “guaranteed money in the pockets of farmers,” said Reese Amxy, a policy organizer at the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. But 150,000 people in the state have already lost eligibility.
It’s not just Illinois. Arizona has seen the steepest decline, with 50 percent of recipients — nearly half a million — already losing benefits. Louisiana (21 percent), Florida (20 percent), Oklahoma (16 percent), Virginia (16 percent), Texas (14 percent), Wyoming (13 percent), and Arkansas (12 percent) round out the rest of the hardest hit states so far.
Yet the person who lost SNAP and the farmer who lost their income alike will be asked to foot the bill for the $1.5 trillion war budget. This is Robin Hood in reverse. Worse still, the weapons those taxes buy are often to use to kill children like ours in Gaza and Iran.
The weapons and tech CEOs that would benefit from the massive war budget, and the politicians bought off by them, seek to keep this cycle going next year at an even grander scale. Americans need to demand their lawmakers say no more Pentagon spending — and invest in the things that actually keep our communities safe instead.
