Government Spending

War Rations

Plus: Pete Hegseth spends millions on lobster tail and rib-eye steak, oil prices go for another roller-coaster ride, no inflation increase, and more...

Eric Boehm | 3.11.2026 9:30 AM

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(Illustration: Midjourney/Polaris/Newscom)

Warrior EAThos. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent tens of millions of dollars on lobster and steak dinners, among other frivolous and questionable purchases, during his first year in the Trump administration.

Hegseth approved $6.9 million of lobster tail purchases in September 2025, according to a report released Tuesday by Open The Books, a nonprofit that tracks government spending. He also approved over $7 million in lobster tail purchases in four other months during 2025.

The September spending spree included over $15 million on rib-eye steaks, $5.3 million for new Apple devices, and a $98,000 piano for the Air Force chief of staff's home. The Pentagon also spent $1,800 on a single chair from luxury furniture maker Herman Miller and $12,540 on new fruit basket stands.

A "surf and turf" meal is something of a joke in the military, where being served steak and lobster is seen as a morale-boosting effort often saved for the evening before bad news is delivered: A deployment, the assignment of a dangerous mission, and so on. But I've never heard of any military tradition that requires the purchase of fancy furniture and new pianos.

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$5 billion in five days. A lot of questionable spending tends to happen in September, the last month of the federal government's fiscal year.

"However, there has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent [by the Pentagon] on grants and contracts," Open The Books reports. That's the largest amount spent in a single month by a single federal department since at least 2008, when the group launched. "In the last five working days of September alone, the DoD spent $50.1 billion on........

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