Trump administration officials are holding closed-door meetings with top lawmakers to push a record-high $1.5 trillion Department of Defense budget through Congress. But a clash is looming with members of the president’s own party: fiscal hawks.
The dynamic, given House Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority, threatens to scramble a defense budget aimed at ramping up munitions and ship production while raising troop pay — all key parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Questioning the proposal are some of the president’s most hardcore supporters: fiscal conservatives, a small slice of the Hill Republicans who are the most vocal about the exploding national deficit.