President Donald Trump wants Congress to pass a $1.5 trillion defense budget alongside dramatic cuts to domestic projects — a pitch he will have a tough time selling inside his own party.
After teasing an ambitious increase to military spending for months, the president made it official Friday by releasing a budget blueprint that would boost the Pentagon by more than 40 percent in the fiscal year beginning in October.
Yet among the congressional Republicans who will need to pass the funding, many are concerned about supersizing defense spending ahead of the coming midterm elections, especially as voters begin to feel the economic consequences of the Iran war and Democrats look to campaign on that issue.
“I’m very wary of voting for excessive spending in defense,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said in an interview Friday morning.
The president’s budget asks Republicans to pass a large chunk of his defense proposal — some $350 billion — using the party-line reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster and forgo bipartisan negotiations. Congressional GOP leaders have already started to embrace the concept of sidelining Democrats to boost Pentagon dollars and immigration enforcement accounts that are currently unfunded amid the broader Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
But reconciliation will require nearly every GOP lawmaker in both chambers to vote in support of a 12-figure boost for Pentagon coffers in order to bring Trump’s wish list to fruition. That will require an aggressive persuasion campaign targeting fiscal hawks who don’t want to spend on overseas wars and more moderate Republicans who don’t want to increase military spending while slashing priorities at home.
Even before Trump sent his budget request to Congress Friday, Democratic political groups had begun airing attack ads to hit incumbent Republicans for supporting military funding increases amid the U.S.-Israel onslaught in Iran, while backing cuts to health care and other domestic programs.
A political action fund Wednesday, for instance, debuted a $250,000 ad targeting Republican Rep.Derrick Van Orden. The Wisconsin incumbent is “going for another $200 billion dollars to spend in Iran,” a Marine Corps veteran says in the video spot. “This is the same guy who backed big cuts to VA care for vets.”
That figure references a potential war supplemental funding request that has not yet come through.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is in a tough reelection fight this fall, made clear in a statement Friday that she doesn’t plan to rubber-stamp Trump’s request: “While the Administration proposes a budget, Congress holds the power of the purse.”
When asked how the administration planned to build support for a $1.5 trillion defense budget on Capitol Hill, the White House budget office pointed Friday to statements from GOP lawmakers cheering the blueprint.
Friday’s request “shift[s] a paradigm by moving more and more discretionary spending into reconciliation,” said an Office of Management and Budget official granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
That statement mirrored White House budget director Russ Vought’s introduction accompanying the fiscal 2027 budget document. He nodded to his effort to undercut the tradition of bipartisan funding negotiations by skirting the filibuster to enact funding Democrats oppose, then using rescissions packages to claw back federal cash enacted in cross-party compromises.
“A historic paradigm shift in the budget process is occurring and is producing real results for the American public,” Vought said. “Fiscal futility is ending. Now that our fiscal ship has turned to face in the right direction, I look forward to working with you to continue moving forward.”
Trump’s whopping military spending request comes as he is trying to land the argument 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.
Plenty of GOP defense hawks agree with Trump’s goals for military spending, particularly at this juncture. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who will drive the GOP’s reconciliation push as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, praised Trump’s defense budget request as “truly historic,” arguing that “it is more than justified by the threats we face throughout the world.”
There is far from uniform agreement on the administration’s legislative method to achieve this boost, however. Many Republicans worry one-time money provided through reconciliation will set up a dangerous budget cliff in the coming years.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who chairs the panel that controls Pentagon spending, cautioned in a statement Friday that the party-line process “can only supplement — not replace” the consistent investment needed to “expand and modernize our defense industrial base.”
Government funding bills cleared by Congress through bipartisan compromise are “the right way” to make sure the military has what it needs, he added.
Democrats quickly made clear Friday they have no plans to cooperate to make the president’s vision a reality. They are balking especially at the White House request for a 10 percent cut to nondefense spending — and a reduction of $73 billion from federal programs outside the military — alongside such a massive increase for the Pentagon.
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.
The Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said in a statement that she plans to again “rip up President Trump’s budget” and ensure Congress writes “a new one instead.” It was a nod to the fact that lawmakers largely rejected the budget cuts Trump previously proposed by enacting $1.6 trillion for federal agencies in recent months.
“After sending prices skyrocketing with his stupid tariffs and reckless war, President Trump is now proposing to eliminate programs that help families afford the basics,” Murray said.
Democratic campaigns are increasingly infusing health care cuts into their messaging about military spending.
“Americans want lower costs for essential health care at home, Republicans want more war funding abroad,” said Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist, in a text message Friday. “People don’t react well to having our health care turned into a piggy bank for their war.”
Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant and frequent Trump critic, also predicted things would end badly if the GOP-led Congress allows the president to get his way.
“This thing is sucking significant financial cost,” he said in an interview Friday of the overseas military conflict. “We’ve already probably burned through $25 billion without a clear path of what we’re trying to accomplish or what victory looks like. When you stumble into war, they can be very expensive in blood and treasure. And this is the treasure part.”
Mia McCarthy, Sophia Cai, Liz Crampton and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.