You can hear the one-upmanship from various lawmakers in DC: Let’s give the Pentagon an extra $100-$200 billion over four years. No, let’s do $125 billion over two years. Better yet, let’s just go for $200 billion over two years.

These are just some of the Pentagon spending proposals flying around the halls of Congress as the majority party simultaneously searches desperately for spending cuts necessary to build consensus in its own ranks on a budget resolution.

Advocates of supersizing the Pentagon budget are saying all sorts of things about why we need to spend this money. They’re saying we spend a fraction of what we used to spend on the military as a percentage of GDP. They’re saying we need a “generational investment” in defense to prepare for a “new Cold War.” They’re saying our national security depends on it.

It doesn’t.

On the contrary, budgeting for our long-term national security requires a budget-informed approach that doesn’t dig us deeper and deeper into debt.

On the question of GDP, indeed we do spend less on the military as a percentage of GDP than in years past. But that isn’t the best measure of our investments. Sure, it is important to measure federal debt as a percentage of GDP because it reflects the nation’s debt burden in relation to economic output and our ability to pay. But military spending as a percentage of GDP bears no relation to national threats and security needs. The threats posed by foreign adversaries don’t rise and fall based on the stock market. Evaluating the effectiveness of defense spending this way creates a skewed perception of spending patterns. Measuring spending in inflation-adjusted U.S. dollars, on the other hand, offers a far more accurate picture of military spending trends. By that metric, military spending has ballooned by nearly 50 percent in the past 25 years. Boosting Pentagon spending to 5 percent of GDP, as some lawmakers are calling for, would mean spending an additional $500 billion per year, a 58 percent hike!

As for a generational investment to prepare for a new Cold War, it’s true that we should rethink and adapt our national security strategies to meet the evolving peer-level threats we face. For instance, Ukraine effectively eliminated the threat of the Russian Black Sea fleet by relying in part on relatively novel technologies like uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). But adapting to the modern battlefield also requires cutting back on systems that no longer meet our needs. Otherwise, we both saddle our military with systems that no longer make sense and undercut our ability to sustain the national security investments we’ll need in years to come.

What you won’t find in any of the proposed Pentagon spending increases is a road map for possible Pentagon spending cuts. But that’s where we come in. In partnership with the Quincy Institute and the Stimson Center, we identified over $60 billion in annual savings from targeted Pentagon cuts and reforms to Pentagon spending practices. Here are some of the highlights.

Cutting Pentagon Bureaucracy Would Save $26 Billion Per Year

The Pentagon spends hundreds of billions of dollars per year on private contractors, often for service contracts and administrative work that could be performed by government employees at a fraction of the cost. Cutting spending on private contractors by 15 percent would save an estimated $26 billion per year.

Cutting F-35s Would Save at Least $12 Billion Per Year

The F-35 is the quintessential boondoggle—a $100 million plane that’s only fully mission capable 30 percent of the time. Over the course of its lifecycle, it’s now projected to cost taxpayers over $2 trillion. Halting the procurement of new F-35 aircraft would save taxpayers over $12 billion per year.

Cutting Long-Range Missile Defense Would Save at Least $9.3 Billion Per Year

While short and medium range missile defense has improved in recent years, there’s still no system capable of defending against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), yet the United States continues pouring money into unworkable long-range missile defense. Cutting total spending on missile defense by one-third would save $9.3 billion per year.

Cutting Excess Basing Infrastructure Would Save $3–$5 Billion Per Year

The Pentagon says it has more basing infrastructure than it needs, some 19 percent more in fact. The best way to address the objectively wasteful spending on this excess infrastructure is through a new Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, a congressional procedure for closing or reorganizing bases. The last BRAC process saved taxpayers $3.8 billion per year, and that was 20 years ago. Savings today would likely be even higher.

Cutting Aircraft Carriers Would Save at Least $2.3 Billion Per Year

In the age of hypersonic missiles and USVs, military analysts are increasingly concerned that aircraft carriers will not last long in the event of a peer-level conflict. Yet we’re still planning to buy more of them, at a cost of roughly $20 billion per ship spread out over a number of years.

A Path Forward

Lawmakers committed to national security and fiscal responsibility should oppose any spending package that greenlights a massive Pentagon spending boost, let alone one that does so without offering any meaningful Pentagon spending cuts. With slim majorities in both the House and Senate, it may only take a few bold defectors to change the equation and force Congress to rethink spending hundreds of billions of dollars more on the only government agency that’s never passed an audit.