Trump requests record-breaking budget of $1.5 trillion for Pentagon

President Donald Trump on Friday officially requested $1.5 trillion in spending for the Pentagon next fiscal year, which would be the largest military

budget in U.S. history.

Trump also outlined some $73 billion in cuts to nondefense federal spending, including cuts to health research, K-12 and higher education, renewable energy and climate grants, a low-income housing energy program, and community development block grants. The cuts to nondefense spending represent a 10 percent reduction from the current fiscal year.

The request comes as Congress grapples with the ballooning costs of the war in Iran, a persistent shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security and the midterm elections ahead.

The White House’s 2027 fiscal year budget proposes a 44% increase in defense spending and asks Congress to approve another $350 billion for military weapons and an expansion of the “defense industrial base,” according to a summary of the request released Friday morning.

The request invests “in the foundations of American military power — from defense industrial capacity to the readiness and health of the force” and ensures the “United States maintains the world’s most powerful and capable military,” the administration wrote in documents from the White House Office of Management and Budget announcing the proposal.

The summary also urged Congress to approve a 13% increase, or $40.8 billion total, focused on the Justice Department’s efforts to “bring violent criminals to justice” related to immigration, gangs and drug cartels.

The influx of funding for the Pentagon would include more money for the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, a 7% pay raise for troops, tens of billions for shipbuilding and the development of new artificial intelligence capabilities in the military, according to the full budget released later Friday.

It also includes massive proposed cuts to federal agencies and programs that the administration argued represented wasteful government spending. OMB requested that lawmakers reduce funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 52% or $4.6 billion; the State Department and other international programs by 30% or $15.5 billion; the Department of Labor by 26% or $3.5 billion and the Department of Agriculture by 19% or $4.9 billion.

The request would cut $15.2 billion in funding for renewable energy projects from Democrats’ party-line infrastructure law passed under President Joe Biden and $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health focusing on programs the administration argues promotes “dangerous ideologies” related to equity and inclusion and international aid. Lawmakers have previously resisted cuts to NIH.

The spending cuts are similar to those that Congress rejected last year, said Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution.

They “are essentially filler to make the defense increase look less unaffordable. They’re going nowhere,” she said. “Ultimately, the purpose of this budget is to push Congress to approve the largest defense spending increase since the Korean War.”

Already, the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran is running up billions of dollars in costs that the administration has signaled it plans to backfill. The Pentagon has mulled asking for up to $200 billion from Congress for the war.

But Republicans have disagreed internally over how much more they’re willing to put into the conflict, especially after lawmakers approved tens of billions in additional funding for defense in their tax and spending law last year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) praised the proposal as one that would “restore fiscal sanity, reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington,” and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who leads the defense appropriations subcommittee, said he welcomes “the president’s request for significant growth in annual appropriations for the U.S. armed forces.”

Democrats in Congress criticized both the defense boost and cuts and pledged to reject the proposal during the appropriations process.

“Donald Trump’s budget is rotten to the core, and Democrats will make sure it never passes,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that raising defense spending by $1.5 trillion would add $6.9 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years when accounting for increased interest costs.

Trump signaled in January that he planned to ask for $1.5 trillion for defense spending, which he said would allow the U.S. to “build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to” and could be offset by tariff revenue. However, the Supreme Court ruled in February that most of the president’s emergency tariffs were unconstitutional, forcing the administration to refund more than $150 billion in revenue.