The problem isn’t the $124,000 Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense spent on ice cream machines last September. Or the $15.1 million they spent on ribeye steak. Or even the $26,000 they dropped on sushi prep tables. Knowing what we know about Pete Hegseth, we should be thankful there were tables and not that whole “eat your sashimi off a naked lady” presentation.

The problem is that every last week of September is Christmas at the Pentagon.

Open the Books, which tracks government spending, writes: “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.”

Why all the profligate spending during the five days formally best known as “Deaf Dog Awareness Week”? (Yes, that’s a real thing.)

Because that’s the end of the Pentagon’s fiscal year. Any monies remaining from the previous year get returned to the Treasury. Can’t have that! So the Air Force Chief of Staff gets himself a $100,000 Steinway piano, and $12,540 goes toward “three-tiered fruit basket stands.” I know that sounds wasteful, but those two-tiered fruit basket stands are trash. Hoo-ah!

Ragging on the Pentagon’s wasteful spending has been a fun parlor game since at least the days of the “$600 toilet seat” scandal. When George H.W. Bush tried to refashion the armed forces into a leaner post–Cold War force after the Soviet Union collapsed, Congress........

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