To the Journal editor:

President Trump has sent Congress a request for $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department budget for the fiscal year 2027. This is more than a 50 percent increase over this year’s budget. The United States currently spends four times more than China, which has the next highest amount of military spending in the world. The Defense Department already has too much money to do the job of defending our country. When a department has too much money, they waste it on unnecessary things and pay more than required for necessities.

Here are just a few examples of the many items that could have been eliminated from this year’s $850 billion budget:

• $66.7 million spent on lobster tails during Trumps first months in office.

• An estimated $1.5 billion to retrofit the airplane provided by Quatar for Trump’s personal use after his presidency.

• $2 billion to re-brand the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

• $10 million to re-install a confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

More money for the Department of Defense will lead to more wasteful items like these that do not serve the purpose of defending our nation. However, these items are “chump change” compared to the inefficiencies of conducting war using the most expensive equipment possible.

Because we have allocated so much money for high technology weapons, we have been in the proverbial position of “killing a fly with a cannonball.” The drones used by Iran cost them between $20,000 to $50,000 each, while the technology we use most often to shoot down each drone costs us about 100 times more. For example, one Patriot PAC-3 missile used to defend against a single drone costs US taxpayers $4 million per shot.

When our military has too much money, they are more likely to be asked to undertake questionable operations. We don’t yet know how much it cost taxpayers to kidnap the president of Venezuela, perhaps billions of dollars. What we do know is that the purpose of this illegal action was to create the opportunity for some American oil companies to take possession of Venezuelan oil, refine it, and profit from selling it to other countries. Because America is self-sufficient when it comes to energy, this military operation did not benefit or protect our country.

If paying for the proposed $1.5 trillion Department of Defense budget was distributed equally to every adult and child in our country, it would cost an average of $4,412 per person, or $11,029 per household, each year. We do not need to spend that kind of money to defend our country, and we should not add it to our already excessive national debt.

What would Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth do with an extra $650 billion? Invade Greenland? Start a war with Canada? Take over Cuba? Occupy Gaza? Send troops into American cities to overturn the next election? If we do not want these things to happen, we should not give them a blank check.

Our congressman, Jack Bergman, sits on the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on the Budget. Please tell him that we do not want a rubberstamp for President Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense. Congress must provide oversight to make sure that the military has what is needed to defend our country in the most efficient, strategic, legal, ethical, accountable, and professional ways possible — and not a dollar more.