President Donald Trump‘s decision to change the Pentagon’s name to the Department of War could cost anywhere from $10 million to $125 million, depending on how broadly and quickly it’s implemented, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
If the department only seeks a modest implementation of the name change, it may only cost roughly $10 million, but it could be much higher depending on how it actually goes about the change. If it were to implement it across the department’s bases and offices worldwide, it could cost upward of $125 million, according to the CBO report, which was released on Wednesday.
The new report on the cost of the change comes several months after Trump signed an executive order changing the department’s name and positions, but it requires an act of Congress to formally change its name. The executive order said the department and officials could begin “use of this additional secondary title.”
Both the president and Pete Hegseth, whose title informally shifted from secretary of defense to secretary of war, argued that the name change is about restoring the military’s fighting ethos.
“We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to ‘Department of Defense.’ So we’re going to the ‘Department of War,’” Trump said as he signed the executive order in September.
Shortly after, officials replaced placards and signs at the Pentagon with the new designation, and also made the changes online, quickly updating the department’s web address to war.gov, Hegseth’s handle on X to @SecWar, and all online references to DOD to DOW.
While those changes were implemented shortly after the president signed the executive order, Congress is the only entity that has the authority to change the department’s name.
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If Congress decides to do that, a “statutory renaming could cost hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how Congress and DoD choose to implement the change,” according to the CBO report.
Congress created the department in 1789 through the Act to Establish an Executive Department, to be Denominated the Department of War, and that name lasted until Congress consolidated the armed services in the National Security Act of 1947, which abolished the department and replaced it with the National Military Establishment. The name of the National Military Establishment was changed a couple of years later to the Department of Defense.
