Commentary
June 24, 2026
7 min read
As President Donald Trump’s standard defense budget proposal for next fiscal year makes its way through Congress, another big request already awaits Capitol Hill’s attention. That first request is already for a lot of money—$1.15 trillion for 2027. Adjusted for inflation, it would surpass what President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama spent on the military at peak levels of the war on terror, easily exceed any defense budget from the Cold War, and approach peak levels of World War II. Yet Trump also wants an additional $350 billion pot of gold, in so-called “mandatory funding,” in next year’s budget as well. It would be available to the Department of Defense to be used as officials see fit, for 2027 and beyond, lacking normal congressional oversight or checks and balances.
This is bad budgeting and bad democracy. Congress needs to tell Trump that any supplemental for FY 2027 due to the Iran war should be made through normal channels—and be smaller in size. The rest of the $350 billion should be evaluated in public debate that lets taxpayers see, and affect, how our money is being spent. Overall, most of it is worthy—but it should be spread over defense budgets for the rest of the decade in a way that can be more closely supervised, and reevaluated year by year, by Congress as well as the executive branch.
