Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget: What taxpayers are getting

By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

The Pentagon’s top budget official said Tuesday that the agency’s failure to pass eight consecutive audits shouldn’t stop Congress from approving the largest military budget in American history, a $1.5 trillion request that represents a 42% increase over current spending.

Pentagon acting comptroller Jules “Jay” Hurst defended the Department of War’s audit record at a news briefing Tuesday, saying the problem wasn’t sloppy spending but the complexity of tracking decades-old assets.

“Tracking obligations has never been an issue for us passing an audit,” he told reporters. “We buy a nuclear missile in the 1970s and then we have to account for the present-day value, which includes every single repair or modification we made of that missile over 50-plus years. That’s the kind of stuff that makes it hard for the department to get an audit; it’s not tracking our funding in the year of execution.”

Hurst said he expects the Department of War to pass an audit by 2028, before the end of Trump’s second term.

The $1.5 trillion request does not include costs related to the ongoing conflict in Iran or the special operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of former leader Nicolás Maduro. Trump is expected to request up to $100 billion more from Congress in a separate supplemental funding bill for Iran operations.

According to Department of War budget documents released Tuesday, the proposal includes: $17.9 billion to begin building the Golden Dome missile defense shield; $65.8 billion for 18 new battle force ships and 16 support ships—the largest shipbuilding request since 1962; more than $74 billion for drone and counter-drone technologies, tripling FY26 spending and marking the largest such investment ever; more than $75 billion for the Space Force; $71.4 billion for the nuclear enterprise, including $16.2 billion for Columbia-class submarines, $6.1 billion for the B-21 stealth bomber, and $4.6 billion for the Sentinel ICBM program; $102 billion to grow air power, a 26% increase over FY26, including ramping F-35 procurement to 85 aircraft; $64.5 billion for land power including missiles, armored vehicles, and helicopters; over $20 billion for cyber capabilities; and $756.8 billion in defense industrial base investments to expand production capacity and supply chains.

The budget also proposes $21.5 billion to repair and construct military barracks and family housing, and $45.7 billion for military medical readiness and healthcare.

Hurst said the investment could generate more than 800,000 American jobs, many in manufacturing and engineering. He cited the F-35 fighter jet program, which costs $80 million to $100 million per aircraft and relies on 2,100 suppliers, as an example of how defense spending ripples through the broader economy.

“As we drastically increase the number of munitions and weapons systems we buy, the department needs to make investments to solidify America’s industrial base,” Hurst said. “Large defense firms are critical to our national security, but they rely on tens of thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses that provide the parts, components and materials to larger firms.”

The budget also calls for adding 44,000 service members and a $5.8 billion military pay raise – 7% for the most junior troops at E-5 and below, 6% for E-6 to O-3, and 5% for O-4 and above.

When the budget was first released earlier this month, Republican leaders on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees praised it as a necessary response. U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., called it essential to confront growing global threats, while Senate Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island called it a “bloated, undisciplined budget” and said the Pentagon “doesn’t lack funding, but it currently lacks responsible civilian leadership and management.”

Not all Republicans were on board. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a fiscal conservative, told NOTUS the defense increases need to be offset elsewhere.

“We need to not grow deficits,” Roy said. “So if we have to prioritize defense, then we need to, you know, de-prioritize other things.”

House Democrats on the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus were sharper in their criticism. Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said in a statement earlier this month that the proposal “could be the most egregious waste of taxpayer dollars we have ever seen,” calling it a “giveaway to defense contractors at the expense of the American people.” They also tied the audit issue directly to the budget, saying, “we cannot justify continuing to increase the Pentagon’s budget when the agency cannot even successfully pass a fiscal audit. No other federal agency is allowed to operate this way.”

The budget request lands as the nation’s fiscal outlook grows increasingly precarious. Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office warned Congress that the federal government is on an “unsustainable fiscal path,” cautioning that a persistent gap between spending and revenue threatens U.S. economic stability. The national debt stands at $39 trillion, and in fiscal year 2025 alone, the deficit reached $1.7 trillion, about 6% of GDP. Last May, the U.S. lost its final AAA credit rating when Moody’s downgraded the country, after similar downgrades by Fitch in 2023 and S&P Global in 2011.

Amid these fiscal challenges, administration officials said the defense budget was a strategic investment in national security for the coming decades.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s commitment to expand American military dominance for decades to come,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a statement. “Previous administrations underinvested in our military while our enemies grew stronger and more dangerous, so we are now changing the game. This budget builds this arsenal without compromising readiness that will ensure we remain the world’s premier fighting force, we protect the homeland, and we create peace through strength now and into the future.”