April 16, 2026
$1.5 trillion. That’s how much President Trump wants congress to give to the Department of Defense and the US military for just their regular annual budget next year. $1.5 dollars!!!! That a 42% budget increase over last year and the most money ever in the history of the department. While you digest that number – you may be *more* interested in knowing what Trump wants to cut from the US budget in order to pay for just some of that defense spending.
Ok – so first you need to know that just because this is the budget that President Trump wants does not mean this is the budget that congress is going to approve. But with a Republican controlled House and Senate – Trump will probably get a large majority of these things. This budget request from Trump is for discretionary spending – not mandatory spending like Social Security and Medicare. Those things must be funded so they’re separate. This budget request handles everything else the government does. And when I talk about all these numbers you need to understand– these are your tax dollars – so you get a say in how they’re spent. You get your say by contacting your lawmaker and letting him or her know – that you agree or disagree with any of the things I’m about to tell you. We clear?
Let’s start with the biggest part of this budget – which is –as I said– that $1.5 trillion that Trump wants for the Department of Defense. Tucked inside that lump sum is $350 billion of mandatory spending….which lawmakers say is what Trump is going to use to pay for this war with Iran. Trump’s OMB Director Russ Vought testified in front of the House budget committee yesterday to explain why the Defense Departments needs $1.5 trillion.
You heard him paradigm shifting investments. Well – even some Republicans on the committee were like mmm – before we hand over a record amount of money to the Defense Department– they probably should pass an audit.
Now – whether the Representative from Wisconsin actually sticks to that audit requirement – we’ll have to see. But let’s discuss what Trump wants to cut in order to pay for *some* of that $1.5 trillion. Let me be clear – not all of that $1.5 trillion is offset by cuts – just some of it is. In fact –with all the cuts Trump’s budget proposes total spending would *still* go up by hundreds of billions of dollars next fiscal year. So we’re clear – Trump is proposing more spending than we can afford.
Now — let’s talk about the things the president wants to cut from the budget. In total there’s about $73 billion in budget cuts in non-defense spending on all kinds of things – including what the president calls weaponized, wasteful and I quote “woke” programs. What are these woke, weaponized and wasteful programs you ask? Well, there’s an $8.5 billion cut to education programs – which is not surprising given that the president wants to completely eliminate the department of education. There are more than $15 billion in budget cuts to climate and energy programs. There’s a $4 billion cut to the low income home energy assistance program. About 6 million low income Americans rely on that program…but Trump’s proposed budget calls it “fraudulent” and eliminates it all together.
Let’s keep going with the cuts. There’s a whopping $5 billion cut to research and grant programs at the National Institute of Health. In case you don’t know — because of the research conducted by NIH we now have DNA testing and vaccines, breakthrough cancer treatments and early Alzheimer’s detection – just to name a few. This Trump budget says NIH “broke the trust” of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research and promotion of dangerous ideologies. The president’s budget proposal drastically cuts multiple programs that help small businesses including a $47 million-cut for the minority business development agency. A $449 million cut to the economic development administration which helps local job creation programs in local communities and an $82 million cut for the rural small business service which provides grants and loans to rural small businesses. The budget proposal cuts more than $1.5 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – you know the agency in charge of telling you about the weather and hurricanes? Yeah – the president is cutting NOAA’s budget for operations, research and grant programs because he says those programs “radicalize students” and “spread baseless environmental alarm.” The president is proposing a more than $3 billion cut to the community development block grant which is a federal program that gives money to states to help with affordable housing, infrastructure and disaster recovery. The trump budget calls it a “slush fund.” Which is a characterization that one Republican took issue with.
While the Republican from North Carolina was trying to appeal to Russ Vought’s sensibilities to try and restore that funding for his state….the Democrats on the committee took a more aggressive approach.
I know this is a long video but if you stuck with me till the end good job – you need to know this is just a fraction of what’s included in Trump’s budget request. I could talk about this for an hour. So if you made it this far, put a money bag emoji in the comment so I know you were here. This budget process is going to play out for the next few months but the fiscal year ends on September 30th and congress will have to have all of these budget decisions made by then.
Read the Trump FY 2027 budget request here.
Read the White House facts sheets on all the requests here.
Watch the testimony of Russ Vought here.
