The Pentagon spent $6.9 million on lobster tail in September. Two million on Alaskan king crab. Fifteen million on ribeye. A $98,329 Steinway grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s house. A custom handmade Japanese flute for $21,750. Fruit basket stands. Herman Miller recliners. Nearly $140,000 on doughnuts.
And then two months later, 42 million Americans lost their food stamps.
Every year the federal government has a rule: if you don’t spend your budget by September 30th, you lose it – and probably get less next year. So every agency goes on a shopping spree in the final weeks of the fiscal year to drain the account.
It’s a genuinely stupid incentive structure that nobody has ever bothered to fix. But in September 2025, Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon didn’t just participate in the annual binge – they set a record. $93.4 billion in a single month. The most any federal agency has spent in a month since at least 2008. In the last five business days alone, $50.1 billion. That’s more than Canada and Mexico’s entire defense budgets put together.
A government watchdog called Open the Books actually warned Hegseth about this earlier in 2025. Told him he had the power to end the practice. He did nothing, and his department proceeded to spend $225 million on furniture and $3.5 billion on cable TV services.
Remember what happened in November?
The government shut down on October 1st. SNAP – that’s food stamps – ran out of money. November 1st came and the EBT cards didn’t reload. For the first time in the program’s entire history. There had been 14 government shutdowns before this one going back to 1980, and in every single one, both Republican and Democratic administrations had found a way to keep food benefits flowing.
There was even a contingency fund with $5 to $6 billion sitting in it specifically for situations like this. The administration had the legal authority to use it. They didn’t.
It took two separate federal judges ordering them to act before they agreed to restore anything, and even then they came back with 50 cents on the dollar.
Governors started raiding their own state budgets to cover what the federal government wouldn’t. California deployed the National Guard to food banks. New York put up $40 million. A dozen states declared states of emergency. All of this because the federal government – the one that just bought a grand piano and a $26,000 violin – said it couldn’t find $8 billion to feed people.
The average SNAP benefit is $187 a month. That’s what a family loses when the card doesn’t reload. Not a dinner out. Groceries.
The people who spent years telling us that food assistance creates dependency, that it breeds laziness, that we simply can’t afford it – those same people just charged $22 million worth of surf and turf to your tab and didn’t lose a minute of sleep.
Sources- Open the Books – Pentagon Should Focus on Defense
- The Daily Beast – Pentagon Spending Frenzy
- New Republic – Pete Hegseth Billions on Fruit Basket Stands
- Snopes – Defense $93 Billion Fact Check
- ABC News – SNAP Benefits Run Dry
- PBS NewsHour – SNAP Benefits Lapse
- CNBC – SNAP Benefits Shutdown Negotiations
- NPR – SNAP Food Benefits Government Shutdown