“It takes money to kill bad guys.”

That’s how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth justified reports that the Pentagon is requesting $200 billion in additional funding to pay for its offensive in Iran, where, as of this writing, more than $18 billion has already been spent to kill thousands, with no end in sight.

Here at Mother Jones, we started to wonder: If the Trump administration weren’t so hellbent on “death and destruction,” at a moment rife with rising inflation and recession concerns, what else could $200 billion deliver? A lot, it turns out. We broke down a few line items below.

2.8 million public school teacher salaries

2,857 luxury 737 jets, bedroom included

378 years of federal public broadcasting funding

500 more White House ballrooms

4 years of a fully-funded National Institutes of Health

2 million Kash Patel trips to Milan by private jet

16.2 years of IRS funding, at pre-Trump levels

40 percent of Greenland, if it were for sale

2,666 Melania sequels

16.9 TSA budgets

2 Warner Bros.

1,779,628 Washington Post salaries

182 million miniature busts of Mount Rushmore with Trump’s face added

2,341 Trump heads on the real Mount Rushmore, space permitting

200 years of free New York City buses

Refund 70 percent of the tariffs the Treasury Department collected illegally

Restore Trump’s cuts to clean energy projects, 6 times over

247 Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus

1.4 billion pairs of Florsheim dress shoes

6.6 years of fully funded school lunches for every public school student in America

3 years of dental coverage, finally included in Medicare Part B

4,347 birthday parades, road repairs included

A lifetime supply of period products more than 100 million Americans

2 Metaverses

1.4 years worth of annual ACA subsidies, which expired in 2025

100 Pentagon name changes

90 percent of Americans’ roughly $220 billion in medical debt

10 years of paid family leave funding

Approximately 1 tank of gas, when this is all over.

© Mother Jones