Two Days of Pentagon Spending Could Fully Fund the National Parks for a Year

The money is there. The betrayal is in the priorities.

Just two days. That’s all it would take.

If the Department of Defense paused its spending for forty-eight hours, the money saved could fully fund the entire National Park Service for a year. Every ranger rehired. Every shuttered visitor center reopened. Every park protected, staffed, and made whole.

We spend nearly a trillion a year on the Pentagon. The National Park Service gets $3.5 billion. That’s less than half of one percent of the defense budget.

And $3.5 billion doesn’t even cover what the parks need. To actually care for the land – to clear the $12 billion maintenance backlog, to staff these places with the people they deserve, to make them safe, accessible, and enduring – we’d need closer to $8 billion. That’s still just over three days of defense spending. Three days for a full year of protection for the most extraordinary places this country still holds in common.

Instead, we let them decay. We ration access. We cut staff, cancel programs, close restrooms, and raise fees – then…