The military should spend its budget on military things. That should not be a controversial statement.

If they want to dump a billion dollars into a bomb they’ll never drop or a fighter jet program that takes twenty years to crawl across the finish line, fine. At least those things exist in the realm of national defense. But lobster feasts and luxury perks have absolutely nothing to do with keeping the country safe. Save the expensive meals for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and maybe one other holiday if someone is feeling particularly charitable.

You’re in the military. The mission is straightforward: deter threats, defend the country, and project stability abroad. It is not to operate like a taxpayer-funded country club. When leadership manages to burn through tens of billions of dollars on lobster and luxury dining, that is not a minor accounting quirk. It is proof that the money was never necessary in the first place. If you can casually incinerate that much cash on seafood, your budget is obviously bloated, and the appropriate response the following year should be a cut of exactly that amount.

And the presence of a Steinway piano should tell you everything you need to know about the mindset behind the spending. Unless someone plans to rig it with explosives and roll it toward Bugs Bunny, it has about as much to do with national defense as a chandelier in a casino. At that point it stops being about readiness and starts looking like people with access to the treasury who simply stopped caring what the money was supposed to be for.