Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman: Trump Fiscal 2026 Defense Budget Request “Cut In Real Terms”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator Roger Wicker has criticized the fiscal 2026 presidential budget request as a “cut in real terms”, after the publication of the president’s budget request revealed that the $1 trillion figure stated by President Donald Trump would only be reached by adding nearly $120 billion in defense spending included in a reconciliation bill awaiting a House vote.
Without the reconciliation bill’s funding, the amount requested by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the “skinny budget” is $892.6 billion, identical to the amount enacted for fiscal 2025 under the administration of President Joe Biden. Due to annual inflation, this amount would effectively cut the budget of the military, although lawmakers have usually provided more funding than requested in previous budget requests through appropriations bills and the National Defense Authorization Act.
“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,” said the Republican senior senator from Mississippi. “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.”
Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said she had “serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research”. “Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse”, added Collins.
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said it was “peculiar how much time the President’s advisors spend talking about restoring peace through strength, given how apparently unwilling they’ve been to invest accordingly in the national defense or in other critical instruments of national power”.
McConnell dismissed the use of the reconciliation bill as “accounting gimmicks” by the administration to persuade itself. “But they won’t fool Congress. The correct response to the most dangerous threats to U.S. interests in decades is not a fifth straight budget request that proposes a real-dollar cut to the U.S. military”.