Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pitching his case for President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget to the Republicans who could complicate it the most: fiscal hawks.
Hegseth may be pushing against a locked door. A bill to significantly boost defense spending would need Democratic votes that it isn’t likely to get, while the GOP-only route — a third reconciliation bill — would require near-unanimous Republican support from lawmakers already demanding politically tricky cuts elsewhere to pay for new defense spending.
Trump’s defense request includes more than $1 trillion in regular appropriations for 2027 and would rely on a party-line reconciliation package for roughly $350 billion more, with a still unresolved $78 billion request for Iran-related military operations. If Congress were to greenlight only the Pentagon’s topline request and not the two other bills, it would represent a near 40% increase over this year’s budget.