Combination of budget proposal, reconciliation bill would increase military funding 13.4%

As a 2024 presidential candidate, Donald Trump said he would "provide record funding for our military."

Trump took the first step toward this goal with the release of his fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, but many legislative and practical hurdles need to be overcome before his promise is achieved.

The administration is seeking a 13.4% military budget increase. But its proposal for getting there is complicated and was shaped by internal skirmishing.

By itself, the administration's budget proposal holds defense spending flat at its fiscal year 2025 level of $892.6 billion. (This includes not only the Pentagon's budget but also $39.1 billion in Energy Department funding for nuclear weapons.) One expert said this amounts to a cut. 

"When you adjust for inflation, this is a real cut in defense funding, and it is $31.6 billion less than the Biden administration had planned for FY26," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow specializing in the defense budget for the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that lawmakers "were shocked when the budget came out" after they saw that defense funding was flat.

The Journal quoted Senate Armed Services Committee member Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., saying some Republicans in both chambers of Congress blame Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who has prioritized spending cuts. "Russ has a lot of sway as the OMB director," Cramer told the Journal. "He's got a very sharp pencil."

However, the budget proposal does not include everything the Trump administration is proposing, and that's where the increase is poised to come from.

The administration's proposed increase over last year's funding level would come from separate legislation known as the reconciliation bill, the wide-ranging legislation that Trump has called his "big, beautiful bill." It can be passed with a simple majority in the Senate, and doesn't require a 60-vote supermajority.

The reconciliation bill allots $119.3 billion for defense. When added to the $892.6 billion in the budget proposal, it brings the administration's total defense spending proposal for fiscal year 2026 to just over $1 trillion, or 13.4% above the previous year's level. If enacted, $1 trillion would set a record for defense funding in a single fiscal year.

The process comes with caveats. One is that historically, presidential budget proposals are starting points for negotiations with lawmakers; rarely if ever are presidential budget proposals enacted as submitted. 

And while Trump benefits from having a Republican House and Senate, his margins in each chamber are narrow, raising the possibility of a few moderate Republicans who are opposed to certain line items joining Democrats to vote against the legislation. (Alternatively, negotiations could end up with higher dollar amounts than the administration requested.)

And the reconciliation bill isn't a done deal even among Republicans; lawmakers are still resolving differences between the House and Senate. 

"The devil is always in the details, and that is certainly true in this instance," Harrison said.

Despite the unorthodox mix of regular appropriations and the reconciliation bill, the Trump administration is "still requesting money, so it is more than fair to say that the president is requesting a major increase in Pentagon spending for fiscal year 2026," said Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks the federal budget. 

There's still much more to play out legislatively, but the administration's proposal is enough for us to move this promise to In the Works.