Defense-focused Trump budget seeks to cut Democratic priorities

Source: Roll Call

Posted April 3, 2026 at 5:31pm


President Donald Trump unveiled a nearly $2.2 trillion spending request for fiscal 2027 Friday that features an enormous defense boost, posing a major challenge to GOP leaders as they seek an election-year spending deal with Democrats.

National security spending would soar to $1.5 trillion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, a roughly 42 percent — or $445 billion — increase from this year’s level, the budget shows. But the administration is counting on Republicans to provide most of that increase, or $350 billion, through a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill, outside of the normal appropriations process.

Nondefense programs, meanwhile, would again be put on the chopping block. Discretionary nondefense programs would face a net cut of $73 billion, or 10 percent, in the coming fiscal year. And if proposed increases for veterans and Pell Grants were set aside, all other nondefense programs would take a collective hit of $95 billion. Even so, the budget ax would not fall quite as sharply as the administration had sought last year, when it proposed slashing nondefense programs by about $160 billion, not counting homeland security funding.

Congress largely rejected those cuts in its final fiscal 2026 appropriations laws. All told, spending would amount to nearly $2.18 trillion, a 15.3 percent increase, after accounting for disaster relief, wildfire suppression and other programs that don’t count against annual spending limits. But the budget document didn’t include all the mandatory spending programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, along with interest on the debt, that would show total federal spending surpassing $7 trillion in the coming year.

Read more: https://rollcall.com/2026/04/03/defense-focused-trump-budget-seeks-to-cut-democratic-priorities/