The Trump administration will release its FY2021 defense budget on Monday morning, the product of a months-long bureaucratic tussle within the Pentagon over which service gets priority, which will be forced to adapt to a new financial reality, and which defense platforms will win out. The budget blueprint will receive the usual amount of attention from reporters who cover the Pentagon beat. And defense analysts in Washington will comb through every page looking for problems.

But let’s not overreact. While the numbers and lines-items may be different, there are three things you should always keep front-of-mind when you read these documents. Stick to these principles and the debate will feel a lot less overwhelming.

1. Trump’s numbers won’t be the actual numbers: 

The appropriations process is the Beltway equivalent of going into the dentist’s office and suffering through a painful root canal. It’s a long, tedious, and downright frustrating negotiation between the executive and legislative branches and within the legislative branch itself. Trump could request whatever number he wanted; the lawmakers who hold the purse strings will get to call the shots. 

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, may just shred the administration’s budget entirely and create its own alternative, replete with policy riders, lower top-line figures, and no money for the border wall. Republicans like Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton will complain that the administration’s budget is too low. Hearings will commence, where Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the service chiefs will try to put on a good face and explain to skeptical lawmakers why the proposed budget is absolutely vital to maintaining the strength and versatility of the armed forces. And the armed services committees will spend months twiddling its thumbs and arguing over what to do before finally arriving at some sort of compromise.

At the end of this process, the 2021 defense budget will likely look a lot different from what the president wanted.

2. People will argue:

It doesn’t matter what the president’s defense budget looks like: people will scream bloody-murder regardless. Questions like “how much should the United States spend on defense” and “is America’s defense spending too high or too low” will remain favorite discussion points in Washington if the Pentagon budget is $550 billion, $650 billion, or $900 billion. 2020 will bring electoral considerations into the pictureas well, adding a whole different category to the debate. Much like the entertainment industry loves the Oscars. defense analysts in Washington love the budget rollout because it gives them something to write about. This is not to suggest the process is trivial; given a $23 trillion national debt and $1 trillion deficits, it most certainly is. But let’s get real—no single number will produce a kumbaya moment. Somebody, somewhere, will be furious.

3. More spending doesn’t mean more security:

There is an old adage bordering on conventional wisdom that the more cash that is funneled to the Pentagon, the safer the United States will be. So the logic goes, more money means more capability, which means more lethality for the armed services. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the combatant commanders are usually the senior officials making these arguments to Congress. Many in Congress are very sympathetic to it, particularly on the armed services committees, where members are tasked with ensuring their districts retain as many defense jobs as possible.

National security policy, however, isn’t as easy as 1+1=2. More spending does not automatically result in more security for the American people. In fact, if Washington’s priorities are skewed, misplaced, and based on questionable assumptions, more money can actually heighten U.S. insecurity by making problems worse. By throwing good money after bad on tertiary problems like the Middle East’s pernicious squabbles, more important line-items are often forced to make do with less resources and bureaucratic attention.  For a town already predisposed to playing Super Man, overspending can be just as dangerous as underspending. As Ben Freeman and William Hartung write, “The principal culprit for this overspending isn’t the actual threats we face, it’s the threats foreign policy elites imagine.”

When you sit down and take a glimpse at President Trump’s proposed defense budget this week, remember this: we are in for a long, bumpy ride.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy organization focused on promoting a realistic grand strategy to ensure American security and prosperity.