A few weeks after President Trump declared on Truth Social that he wants a $1.5 trillion military budget, Republican leaders in Congress are working on making his dream of increasing military spending by about 50% a reality.
The 2026 military budget marked the first to exceed $1 trillion, which was achieved by Congress passing a 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) worth over $900 billion and combining it with $150 billion in supplemental military spending that was included in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, a reconciliation bill that became law last year.
Now, the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are eyeing another reconciliation bill to secure Trump’s $1.5 trillion budget. Mike Rogers (R-AL), chair of the House committee, said he and his Senate counterpart, Roger Wicker (R-MS), want to pass a reconciliation that will include $450 billion in military spending.
“We’ve informed our leadership of that,” Rogers told Breaking Defense last week. “We’re not talking about something frivolous here. We’re talking about national defense.”
He explained that he expects the White House to request about $1.03 trillion for the NDAA and that $20 billion from the reconciliation bill passed last year would be rolled into the 2027 budget, leaving a $450 billion to reach Trump’s goal of $1.5 trillion.
Other Republican leaders oppose using reconciliation bills to pad the military budget, as they want the entire amount included in the NDAA, including Se. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, wants Trump’s massive request to be treated as the base budget.
“Much of the Defense Subcommittee’s most arduous work in recent months has been helping the armed services address real, urgent operational shortfalls that were created when much of Washington decided to pretend that one-time infusions of cash could take the place of consistent annual appropriations,” McConnell said in a recent floor speech, according to Roll Call.
Either way, Republicans in Congress seem eager to go along with a mammoth increase in military spending and are just currently at odds over how exactly they will come up with the money.
