Trump asks Congress to supersize military budget, slash domestic programs
President Donald Trump called Friday for Congress to back a $1.5 trillion defense budget alongside yawning reductions to domestic programs — making official the ambitious military increase he’s been teasing for months.
In the president’s budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October, the White House detailed a military funding hike of more than 40 percent. The Trump administration is formally proposing Republicans in Congress enact a large chunk of that defense cash — some $350 billion — using the party-line reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster and forgo bipartisan negotiations.
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are starting to embrace the concept of sidelining Democrats to boost Pentagon dollars and immigration enforcement accounts currently unfunded amid the broader Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But Trump will struggle to build enough political will on his own side of the aisle to fulfill his defense goals through a party-line maneuver as fiscal conservatives demand commensurate spending cuts after grudgingly backing the multitrillion-dollar tax and spending package Republicans enacted last summer.
The administration’s whopping military spending request comes as Trump argues that the U.S. is on the verge of achieving its aims in the monthlong war against Iran, though the blueprint released Friday appears to be separate from an expected supplemental funding request to finance the Middle East campaign.
While the administration is expecting lawmakers to approve a base defense budget of $1.15 trillion through the annual appropriations process — the first time the base budget would exceed $1 trillion — relying on reconciliation for $350 billion is a risky tactic. GOP majorities are narrow, and supersizing defense spending while slashing domestic funding could cost Republicans in the coming midterms, particularly if voters blame the party for continued military and economic consequences of the Iran war.
The White House labeled the budget “historic” for its investment in military hard power — name checking priority investments such as Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield and a planned Trump-class battleship as part of the Navy’s “Golden Fleet.”
Touting the defense spending hike as exceeding the Reagan-era buildup and comparable to U.S. increases prior to World War II, the White House called the $1.5 trillion request "a level that recognizes the current global threat environment and restores the readiness and lethality of our forces."
The budget aims to pour $66 billion into Navy shipbuilding to buy a combined 34 warships and support vessels. Trump is also proposing a tiered military pay raise that would reach as high as 7 percent for the most junior enlisted troops, along with more money to ramp up production of high-end missiles and air defenses.
While calling for a historic increase in the military’s budget, the White House is also seeking a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending, with a proposed reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military. Major targets of the administration’s proposed spending reductions are environmental programs across many federal agencies, including nixing $15 billion in grants for efforts such as renewable energy technology and $4 billion in transportation funds for programs supporting infrastructure to charge electric vehicles.
As top Trump administration officials increasingly decry fraud in tax incentives and U.S. safety net programs like Medicare, the president’s budget calls for the creation of a National Fraud Division to help the Justice Department stem what the White House characterizes as a “rampant and pervasive problem.”
The administration is recommending that Congress eliminate $1.6 billion in research programs run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and asking lawmakers to find $45 million in savings by slashing the Interior Department’s renewable energy programs. The White House wants another $642 million in cuts to "woke and wasteful international financial institutions" within the Treasury Department budget.
The blueprint, prepared by White House budget chief Russ Vought, proposes the elimination of current fair housing initiatives at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund that awards funding to community banks and other financial institutions that lend to communities traditionally underserved by the banking industry.
It also calls for Congress to zero out funding for the Commerce Department agency that promotes minority-owned businesses and the National Endowment for Democracy, which promotes freedom in countries with authoritarian regimes that threaten U.S. interests.
For the second year in a row, Trump’s fiscal framework arrives months late and is not expected to include all of the data lawmakers rely on to write funding bills for the upcoming fiscal year. Last year, Republican lawmakers were still pressing Vought for those details well into the summer.
