4 distinguished protection hawks on Capitol Hill on Friday slammed President Trump’s 2026 price range request as insufficient, arguing it will freeze protection funding for the second yr in a row at a time when the nation faces rising threats from China, Russia and different adversaries.
Home Armed Companies Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) stated Friday he was “very concerned” concerning the president’s protection spending request.
“We are currently at the lowest level of defenses spending as a percentage of GDP since before World War II. That is no longer sustainable in the threat environment we face,” he warned in a press release.
“I am very concerned the requested base budget for defense does not reflect a realistic path to building the military capability we need to achieve President Trump’s Peace Through Strength agenda,” he stated, including he seems to be ahead to working with the president and Senate allies to “achieve real growth in the defense budget.”
Former Senate Republican Chief Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who now chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Protection, stated the White Home request would lengthen the Biden administration’s “material neglect” of protection spending wants.
“The Trump administration missed a tremendous opportunity to answer their predecessor’s chronic underinvestment in the U.S. military with robust, full-year funding for [fiscal 2025.] Now, it appears the Trump Administration’s FY26 defense budget request will double down on the Biden administration’s material neglect for the glaring national security threat challenges about which they speak with great alarm,” McConnell stated in a press release.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) stated she had “serious objections” to what she referred to as “the proposed freeze in our defense funding,” citing the “security challenges” the nation faces.
Whereas the White Home price range workplace touted its proposal for elevating protection spending by 13 % to $1.01 trillion in fiscal 2026, critics on Capitol Hill argued the Workplace of Administration and Price range plans to satisfy that focus on by pulling $119 billion from the pot of cash anticipated to be included for protection within the price range reconciliation invoice — the package deal that can lengthen the 2017 tax cuts and supply $175 billion for border safety.
Senate Armed Companies Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) criticized the White Home proposal for holding the annual discretionary protection spending degree flat at $893 billion.
“For the defense budget, OMB has requested a fifth year straight of Biden administration funding, leaving military spending flat, which is a cut in real terms,” Wicker stated in a press release.
He balked on the White Home plan to drag roughly 85 % of the funding that Senate Republicans plan so as to add to this yr’s price range reconciliation package deal to make up for freezing annual discretionary protection spending, which is doled out by means of the appropriations course of.
Congress froze discretionary protection spending in 2025 by passing a yearlong persevering with decision in mid-March.
Wicker stated the protection funding from the price range reconciliation package deal, which might be directed spending and separate from the annual appropriations course of, must be reserved for brand new initiatives, equivalent to President Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile protection program.
“The Big, Beautiful Reconciliation Bill was always meant to change fundamentally the direction of the Pentagon on programs like Golden Dome, border support, and unmanned capabilities – not to paper over OMB’s intent to shred to the bone our military capabilities and our support to service members,” Wicker stated.
Workplace of Administration and Price range Director Russell Vought wrote in a letter to Collins (R-Maine) that Trump’s price range would enhance protection spending by 13 % for fiscal 2026, bringing it to $1.01 trillion.
However a Senate GOP aide stated the White Home price range workplace has requested $893 billion in baseline protection spending for subsequent yr by means of the annual appropriations course of and attending to the goal by counting cash from the reconciliation invoice, which protection hawks on Capitol Hill imagine must be thought of individually.
The aide stated that the Trump administration seems to maintain protection spending basically frozen over the following 4 years and famous the $150 billion in direct protection spending will is slated to be included within the reconciliation package deal was purported to be unfold out over the remainder of Trump’s second time period.
Protection hawks on Capitol Hill imagine the White Home price range workplace is attempting to painting its proposal as growing protection spending by 13 % by counting on a price range gimmick, the aide stated.
In his assertion, Wicker argued the Workplace of Administration and Price range “is not requesting a trillion-dollar budget” for protection.
“It is requesting a budget of $892.6 billion, which is a cut in real terms. This budget would decrease President Trump’s military options and his negotiating leverage,” Wicker stated in his assertion.
He warned of an “Axis of Aggressors led by the Chinese Communist Party, who have already started a trade war rather than negotiate in good faith.”
“We need a real Peace through Strength agenda to ensure Xi Jinping does not launch a military war against us in Asia, beyond his existing military support to the Russians, the Iranians, Hamas and the Houthis,” Wicker stated.
Vought instructed reporters in a briefing name Friday that the White Home price range gives a “more durable way to get to a trillion dollars in defense spending.”
He stated the White Home proposal for complete protection spending in 2026, which would come with a big chunk of protection funding from the price range reconciliation package deal, requires “a very healthy increase” to the Pentagon’s price range.
“We want to make sure that it is going towards capabilities that [the Department of Defense] needs, says it wants, says are vital,” Vought stated. “And we are changing the way that this place works, and we’re happy to continue to explain that to the Hill. And I’m not surprised that we’ll have to do some work on that front.”
However McConnell in his assertion Friday echoed Wicker’s argument that cash from the reconciliation invoice shouldn’t be counted towards the Protection Division’s annual price range.
“Make no mistake: a one-time influx reconciliation spending is not a substitute for full-year appropriations. It’s a supplement. OMB accounting gimmicks may well convince Administration officials and spokesmen that they’re doing enough to counter the growing, coordinated challenges we face from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and radical terrorists. But they won’t fool Congress,” he stated.
Alex Gangitano contributed.
