Changing Defense Department's name to Department of War could cost up to $125 million, CBO estimates
Source: CBS News
Updated on: January 14, 2026 / 4:58 PM EST
The Trump administration's push to change the Defense Department's name to the Department of War could cost nine figures, according to a new estimate by Congress' budget watchdog.
President Trump signed an executive order last September to start the process of renaming the federal government's largest employer. The agency now refers to itself as the Department of War on its website and in many official communications, though the agency is still formally called the Department of Defense under federal law.
The cost of the renaming effort could range from $10 million to $125 million, depending on how broadly it is applied, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday following a request from Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The total price tag could vary depending on how broadly the agency decides to apply the new name and how rapidly the renaming is rolled out, the office said in an 11-page report.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/changing-defense-department-name-department-of-war-could-cost-up-to-125-million-dollars-cbo/
Link to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) REPORT - https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-01/61942-DoD-Name-Change.pdf
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and when my agency did multiple re-orgs over the years (first changing the alignment away from the original number of HHS Regions, then re-doing the Regions a couple more times years after that), they neglected the fact that the many data systems we used, were specifically coded for our specific geographic locations, and now they suddenly tossed out those locations.
That meant a nightmare for the programmers in order to ensure that the deprecated/archived data, could be cross-checked to correspond with what would be the new. And this included systems that tracked FTE workload hours in order to tie them in with any mandated Congressionally-funded programmatic work, as well as the regular BA (Budget Authority) work, in order to produce reports for Congress - either on-demand and/or annually, as well as to satisfy any financial data audits. 
