Trump proposes a huge increase in military spending, despite widespread economic stresses

Trump proposes a huge increase in military spending despite widespread economic stresses.

April 10, 2026

Bob Sheak

Arlene Sheak edits

Introduction

Trump and Republicans in Congress are – and have been – advancing a budget for the country that reduces assistance for ordinary citizens. This is glaringly obvious in Trump’s budget proposal for 2027, a budget that likely will be approved by Republicans in Congress. It is a budget that overwhelming favors military spending. It would not be so bad if citizens generally were in sound financial shape, but many are not. There has been an “affordability” problem across the country for most of Trump’s second term.

At the same time, people are also being negatively affected by Trump’s tariffs, cuts in government programs and staff in the early months of his second term, a precarious job market, and the disastrous effects of his Iran War reflected, for example, in high gas prices and high fertilizer prices. See the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities for a detailed analysis if the economic difficulties associated with the policies of Trump and the Republican party (https://www.cbpp.org.research/federal-budget/a-record-of-historic-harm-in-the-first-year-of-trumps-second-term). Here is a summary of the CBPP’s research.

“The Trump Administration and congressional Republicans advanced one of the most radically regressive policy agendas in our nation’s history during the first year of President Trump’s second term. As a result, tens of millions of people will be less able to meet the growing cost of their basic needs — whether it’s affording groceries, seeing a doctor, keeping the power on, or paying the rent — even as the wealthiest households get a windfall of more tax breaks. At the same time, President Trump and his Administration have undermined and corrupted many basic functions of government, including the proper and timely allocation of funds approved by Congress, leading to more disruption and harm.”

These problems figure in the low poll ratings of Trump. For example, here is the most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest from The Economist (April 1, 2026):

• Favorable: 36%
• Unfavorable: 57%
• Not sure: 7%

In this context, consider Trump’s 2027 budget proposal.

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“A Moral Obscenity”

Jake Johnson refers to this term in describing Trump’s 2027 budget proposal (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-2027-budget). Here is some of what he writes.

“President Donald Trump’s White House released a budget proposal on Friday [Sept. 3] that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.”

“Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress [now controlled by Republicans] includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.”

Johnson continues. “Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing ‘woke programs’ and ‘ending the Green New Scam’—include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.

“The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures.”

“One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House’s requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to ‘its lowest level in the modern era.’”

Alternatively, what would $500 billion in Pentagon spending if it were spent on non-defense programs and the needs of typical citizens? Here are some answers to which Johnson refers.

“The $500 billion annual increase in proposed Pentagon spending—if it were instead deployed humanely—would be enough to solve or meaningfully address the nation’s great problems, from healthcare to daycare, from the climate crisis to affordable housing, from improving schools to making college education affordable,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of  Public Citizen. “Instead, Trump and Vought propose to spend an unfathomable amount on a Pentagon that can’t even pass an audit to further empower an out-of-control and incompetent leader in Pete Hegseth.”

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Trump’s Imperial Military Budget

Robert L. Borosage refers to Trump’s budget proposal as an “imperial military budget, The Nation, April 8, 2026

(https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-imperials-military-budget).

Borosage writes: “In his recent military budget, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud: Waging war is more important to his administration than providing for basic needs at home.”

He points out that “the $1.5 trillion military budget—a $500 billion, 42 percent increase that would be the largest year-on-year percentage increase since the mobilization for Korean War.” Trump is all-in on this increase, while saying that the federal government should not have to continue to pay for a host of non-defense programs. He quotes Trump.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget director] Russell [Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare…. We’re fighting wars…. it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.”

Borosage continues. “It wasn’t just daycare that would take the hit. The press reported that president’s budget called for a 10 percent cut in all non-defense discretionary programs (outside of Medicare and Medicaid, which were savaged last year, and Social Security), targeting primarily anything related to climate, the environment, civil rights, education, and food support and other poverty programs. But in reality, compared to the cost of continuing current levels of service, it slashes domestic programs by nearly one-fourth. With ICE and Homeland Security getting increases, targeted programs were cut to the bone: the Environmental Protection Agency cut by more than one-half, LIHEAP—heating subsidies for low income families—eliminated, another $20 billion lopped off rebuilding infrastructure.”

Borosage elaborates his point.

“The proposed $1.5 trillion annual military budget, about 5 percent of the GNP, is real money. As Dean Baker notes, it comes to about $12,000 per family. And that doesn’t include the $200 billion supplemental that the Pentagon will reportedly seek to pay for the war on Iran.

Borosage continues. “The money lards a military-industrial complex that is the largest source of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government—and has never been able to pass an audit.”

And he refers to Representative Ro Khanna on what alternative non-military spending could buy.

“Let me tell you what $200 billion could do here in America. It would allow for free public college for every American kid. We could build a thousand trade schools, we could pay every American teacher $60,000 to start.

“We could have universal childcare: childcare at $10 a day, with childcare workers making $25 an hour. And we could fully fund special needs education at 40% of what the federal government needs to fund.

“Or it could pay to reverse the cuts already made in vital needs. Reversing the cuts in Obamacare made by Trump and the Republican Congress last year would cost $27 billion annually. Extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit that aided low-wage workers curing Covid would cost about $40 billion annually.

We don’t need more military spending to keep us safe. We already have such a force.

Indeed, “Trump repeatedly and correctly boasts that the US military is already the most powerful military in the world by far. The ‘Department of War’ accounts for 40 percent of the world’s military spending, more than the next nine costliest militaries combined—seven of which are (or were before Trump) our allies. This despite the fact that, surrounded by oceans to the East and West and allies to the North and South, the United States is uniquely secure against any conventional assault.”

Trump’s “military fantasies”

“But,” Borosage writes, “Trump’s budget request isn’t really a wartime budget. Most of the increase is a down payment on military fantasies. A centerpiece is an initial investment in Trump’s Golden Dome, his utterly fantastically recycled version of Reagan’s Star Wars, calling for building a defensive ‘dome against missile attacks. It will squander hundreds of billions on multiple layers of land-, sea-, and space-based sensors and interceptors designed to protect the US from next-generation missiles and drones. Like Reagan’s fantasy, the system won’t work, serving only to enrich high-tech military contractors, accelerate the arms race in space, and lead China and Russia and other future nuclear-armed adversaries (France?) to move toward hair-trigger alert postures. Add to that a down payment of $65.8 billion in shipbuilding for Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ featuring ‘Trump-class’ battleships that, if our corrupted military contractors actually succeed in building, will provide tempting targets for inexpensive air and underwater drones that are becoming the weapons of choice for weaker countries.”

Borosage offers the following conclusion. “A $1.5 trillion annual military budget isn’t necessary for the defense of the United States. Rather it assumes that the US will continue to police the world. We will remain committed to global military hegemony—aiming to be dominant militarily in this hemisphere, from Europe to the Russian border, counter China in the South China Sea, strike terrorists across the world, sustain a global empire of 750-plus military bases, and deploy military forces to over 100 countries, while patrolling the seven seas.”

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William Hartung contends in an article for Common Dreams. April 3, 2026that Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon Budget will make US weaker

(https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/1-5-trillion-pentagon-budget). William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author most recently of “Pathways to Pentagon Spending Reductions: Removing the Obstacles.”

Here’s some of what Hartung writes.

““It has been reported that the Pentagon on Friday [April 3] will release a proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027 of almost $1.5 trillion, with approximately $1.15 trillion in discretionary spending contained in the department’s regular annual budget and an additional $350 billion dependent on Congress including it in a separate budget reconciliation bill.

“Whatever vehicles the administration chooses to promote this huge increase, it will be doubling down on a failed budgetary and national security strategy. If passed as requested, $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending—in a single year–will make America weaker by underwriting a misguided strategy, funding outmoded weapons programs, and crowding out other essential public investments.

“The current war in the Middle East is a case study in the ineffectiveness of an overreliance on military force in seeking to make America or the world a safer place.”

Here is a key point. Hartung writes: “In his first term, President Trump abandoned a multilateral agreement that was effectively blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. Six years later, in his second term, the president initially justified his disastrous intervention against Iran as being motivated by fears” that Iran might be developing such a capacity. He did this without evidence they were doing so.

Hartung emphasizes that diplomacy worked, while reckless resort to force does not, as evidenced by the devastating human, budgetary, and global economic consequences of the current Middle East war. Passing a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget would be a recipe for endless war.

“Meanwhile, other, non-military investments needed to protect the lives and livelihoods of Americans are being sharply reduced. By one account, the first week of the war on Iran cost $11.6 billion. That’s more than the Trump administration proposed for the annual budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency combined for this year. Yet addressing the climate crisis and the need to prevent future outbreaks of disease are essential to the safety and security of Americans.

“The administration has also reduced our available tools of influence on the foreign policy front by decimating the Agency for International Development, laying off trained diplomats at the State Department, and withdrawing from major international agreements. This leaves force and the threat of force as virtually the last tools standing for promoting U.S. security interests.”

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Eric Ross writes at length for Tom Dispatch on “The Price of Empire and the Costs of War on Iran.” April 2, 2026 (https://tomdispatch.com/blowback-2026). In his opening paragraph, Ross presents a summary of the many “costs” of Trump’s war on Iran, not only for the US but even more on Iran.

“What will the costs of the latest round of illegal, ill-fated U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East amount to? Some of the toll is already clear. Washington has squandered billions of dollars on a reckless war of aggression against Iran. A merciless campaign of aerial bombardment has driven millions from their homes. American and Israeli airstrikes have rained destruction on 10,000 civilian sites and already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and Lebanon. Among the dead are more than 200 children, many killed in a U.S. strike on a girls’ school, a war crime that evokes the grim precedent of such past American atrocities as the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam or the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in Iraq.

“The latest war has also dealt a potentially fatal blow to our already battered democratic institutions. It’s a war neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public. Instead, it was launched by a president who refuses to submit to the law or heed the will of the people, claiming in true authoritarian fashion that he is the law, and that he alone embodies the popular will.”

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Sarah Fortinsky writes on how Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low as the Iran war squeezes economy, and reminds us how this war was arbitrarily started by Trump, with no consultation with Congress and with no concern about public opinion. Now, the public is reacting, belatedly  negatively(https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5811709-trump-approval-rating-iran-war-economy). Here’s some of what she writes.

“President Trump’s approval numbers have slipped in recent weeks, hovering near the lowest levels of his second term, as Americans — including his conservative base — grow increasingly wary of a prolonged war in Iran that could portend trouble for the U.S. economy.

“Recent polling from YouGov and The Economist has Trump’s approval rating down 4 percentage points since just before the U.S. struck Iran, falling from 39 percent in late February to 35 percent in the latest survey.

“A Reuters/Ipsos poll similarly put Trump’s approval at 36 percent, down from 40 percent earlier this month, while a Fox News survey found the president’s disapproval rating at 59 percent, the highest level recorded in either of his terms.

The shift has coincided with declining support for Trump’s handling of the Iran war, which saw its sharpest drop yet this past week — as gas prices climbed to more than $4 for the first time since 2022….”

“Trump, who spoke to the public Wednesday night [April 1] about the conflict, saw his polling on Iran start out at 39 percent in early March, before dropping to 36 percent for two weeks and then ticking down to 30 percent in the latest YouGov/Economist survey.”

“The drop-off in Trump’s overall approval rating comes as Americans broadly sour on the economy, with only 14 percent saying conditions are improving….”

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Concluding thoughts

Trump’s budget proposal, with its emphasis on military spending and dismissal of federal responsibility for most non-defense programs, is losing his support among vast numbers of citizens, even among his base. This is reflected in polls and also in recent Democratic electoral victories. It is also reflected in the 8 million people who demonstrated against Trump on “No King’s” day. Still, it is of great concern that Trump is still able to wield such great power as president.