Hegseth: We Welcome DOGE At DOD, It's Long Overdue

 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told FNC's Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures" that the Pentagon will "welcome" DOGE's effort to find wasted and misused funds in the defense budget.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Tell us about the upcoming look at the spending at the Defense Department. Should we expect hundreds of billions in wasteful spending there?

DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH: Unfortunately, I think so.

And we very much -- the president is right, he's setting the pace, and he is also correct that American taxpayers deserve to know exactly how and where their money is spent.

The fact that I have to commit to an audit being done in four years is bad enough. The Pentagon should be able to pass a budget right now. Thankfully, the Marine Corps has passed a clean audit for two years in a row, and I applaud them, but that needs to go across the entire department. That will be a focus.

When we spend dollars, we need to know where they're going and why. That's simple accounting, and that has not existed at the Defense Department, and we're going to fix that.

But that's not even DOGE. We welcome Elon Musk and DOGE coming into our department to help us identify additional ways in which we can streamline costs, fast-track acquisitions, cut waste, cut tail to put it to tooth.

We know in a world where America's, you know, $37 trillion in debt, resources will not be unlimited. Every dollar we can find that isn't being spent wisely is one we can put toward warfighters. So we welcome DOGE at DOD. We will partner with them, and it's long overdue. The Defense Department's got a huge budget -- but it needs to be responsible.

MARIA BARTIROMO: All of this as you're looking to "modernize." President Trump told me he'd like to call it a golden sphere -- I know we that talked 'Iron Dome' because Israel has that. Will this spawn a whole new effort to modernize and renew innovation in the U.S. Military? What's the plan?


DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH: It's a great question. Modernization is an incredibly important part of what we're doing at DOD. Take our nuclear triad, for example. Russia's got a massive nuclear arsenal, China is racing to build theirs quickly, with hundreds of new nuclear weapons year by year. We need to update our nuclear triad on land, on sea, and in air.

That also includes the iron dome, or golden dome, or whatever you want to call it, we have embraced the executive order of President Trump. We're going to insure it's included in reconciliation money in the FY-26, all our budgets going forward, to invest in the ability -- get this novel if idea -- to defend our homeland. That's why we're focusing on our southern border and the invasion there, to have 100% operational control, and then our skies.

As president Trump a visionary just like Ronald Reagan with SDI back against the Soviets. Our skies will be deterred from rogue actors or enemies. That helps us project power in a meaningful way while protecting the American people.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/02/09/defense_secretary_hegseth_we_welcome_doge_at_dod_its_long_overdue.html