Budget

Trump's New Budget—Which Proposes $1.5 Trillion for Defense—Is Unserious. You Should Still Take It Seriously.

It would be easy to wave it away and move on. But that's how the U.S. got in such a dire fiscal situation.

Veronique de Rugy | 4.9.2026 9:45 AM

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(Illustration: Midjourney/Nikolai Sorokin/ Mikael Damkier/Dreamstime)

The president's fiscal 2027 budget is out, and I have two reactions. The first will sound familiar: Like so many budgets before it, this is not a serious effort to put America's government on a sustainable path. The second is more important: It would be a mistake to dismiss it as just another unserious document. That is exactly how we got here.

Start with what the new budget does and does not do. It's not a comprehensive fiscal plan. It covers only about one-third of federal spending, focusing heavily on discretionary choices and largely ignoring the autopilot spending that drives our long-term debt.

The headline item is defense spending. The administration proposes a jump of $445 billion to reach $1.5 trillion. That's a 42 percent increase in one year, the largest since the Korean War, raising defense spending to roughly 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

This is not a onetime surge that will simply recede when things calm down in Iran. It's an expansion of the spending base. Bureaucracies and procurement contracts do not shrink after a buildup. And........

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