1. United States
2. Fla.
3. Letter

Vote no on Trump's proposed $1.7 trillion defense budget. This represents a doubling of our pre-2025 baseline of $850 billion and will cost taxpayers an additional $3.2 trillion over ten years. For context, China spends $317 billion annually on defense and Russia spends $149 billion. We're spending more than the next several countries combined while the Pentagon has failed every audit since 2018, leaving hundreds of billions unaccounted for. At least $17.5 billion is allocated to the Golden Dome missile defense system, which has already ballooned from $175 billion to $185 billion before a single interceptor launches. Scientists at the American Physical Society found defending against just one North Korean missile would require 1,600 space-based interceptors. Defending against 10 missiles would need 40,000 interceptors, three times the number of currently active satellites. Independent estimates put the real cost between $1.1 trillion and $3.6 trillion for a system that can still be defeated by cheap decoys. Meanwhile, $350 billion of this budget will bypass normal appropriations through reconciliation, meaning almost no Congressional oversight. We cannot afford universal childcare at $65 billion per year, but we can funnel billions to SpaceX, Palantir, and other politically connected contractors for a system that won't work. This is fiscal insanity masquerading as national security.