The administration has launched the opening salvo in a funding battle that will play out past the November elections
The Trump administration has made the largest defense budget request in American history. It calls for a complete restructuring of the U.S. defense industrial base, pumping hundreds of billions into shipbuilding, munitions, drones, AI and critical minerals.
If enacted as written, the budget would undertake three ambitious goals: accelerate a generation of weapons procurement; build the institutional and financial infrastructure to expand America’s defense industrial base; and institutionalize the Pentagon’s role as a direct investor in domestic manufacturing.
The request arrives amid partisan gridlock. To reach its $1.45 trillion total, the administration is asking Congress to pass $350 billion of it through budget reconciliation, a high-risk maneuver that has already drawn fire from Republicans and Democrats alike, and may never make it through a narrowly divided Senate before the November midterms.
Congressional wrangling will continue all year, putting several defense spending bills in competition with each other. Last week’s congressional hearings were only the opening round of a legislative battle that will play out across an election year, complicated by an Iran war supplemental ask that could seek more than $100 billion on top of everything else.
