President Trump on Friday released his budget request for 2027, which calls for $1.5 trillion in defense spending.
Steve Inskeep, host:
The White House has released its 2027 budget request, a request to Congress. This proposed budget includes record spending for the Defense Department – ​​$1.5 trillion a year. Other programs have also been cut in the budget. NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben is covering it from the White House. Danielle, good morning.
DANIEL KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I was thinking about asking you to pay, dollar for dollar, you know, $1.5 trillion. Just figure out how each dollar is spent, but time is limited, so…
Kurtzleben: Settle down, Steve. let’s do this.
INSKEEP: Okay. Go for it. What can you tell us?
KURTZLEBEN: Okay. Well, let’s talk briefly. The biggest thing here so far is that this budget will boost defense spending, yes, as you said, by $1.5 trillion a year, and that will be the largest level in modern history. According to the White House, this total would be a 42% increase from fiscal year 2026…
INSKEEP: Wow.
KURTZLEBEN: …defense resources. Yes.
INSKEEP: And that was already pretty much, but go ahead.
KURTZLEBEN: Yes, absolutely. And of course, this comes after Trump started a war with Iran, which we’ve been in for about five weeks. There have also been military operations in Venezuela and the Caribbean region. Now, the White House wants some of this money — $350 billion — to pass through Congress soon as part of Congressional efforts to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The budget also calls for spending cuts of about $73 billion, most of which is from domestic spending. So these are things like climate, housing, social services and health care.
INSKEEP: I’m just doing some math in my head. So an additional four,500 billion for defence. Seventy-three billion less for other things. That’s why we are increasing the losses. We are borrowing more. But where do you get $73 billion to cut spending?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, as I said, things like climate and housing, as the White House says, the savings will be achieved by “reducing or eliminating crippling, weaponized and wasteful programs” and pushing some obligations back onto the states. Now, woke, armed, and useless – they don’t have precise legal or accounting definitions, so you can imagine the White House has its own idea of ​​what they are.
INSKEEP: However, if I had a dollar for every alliterative phrase in the government, we would have a balanced budget. But please proceed.
Kurtzleben: That’s great. Well, so Trump has named Vice President J.D. Vance as his fraud czar, and he hopes to recoup some of the government spending by cracking down on fraud and abuse. Trump said Friday that Vance would focus on fraud everywhere but primarily on blue states. And on putting some of the spending obligations back on the states, Trump actually revealed a lot during a speech in front of religious leaders on Wednesday this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
President Donald Trump: It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state by state basis. You can’t do it at the federal level. We have to keep one thing in mind – military security. We have to protect the country.
KURTZLEBEN: So he’s being really clear about how the Social Security program, even Medicare, which is beloved by many people, including Republicans in his base – for him, they can take a back seat to defense spending. And one more note here. The lunch where he made these comments was not open to the press, but the White House posted a video of those entire comments before removing it.
INSKEEP: Good thing you saved it. So how likely is it that Congress will give the White House what it wants?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, the annual budget request is generally considered a blueprint of the White House’s priorities. Of course, Congress approves and sets spending levels. So in a perfectly functioning system, the budget request would go to Congress. Congress will hold hearings with Trump officials, deliberate, create budget proposals, then create appropriations bills. But things haven’t been working that way for decades. Lawmakers have struggled. They are still working on last year’s budget work and funding DHS. So no, this won’t be the exact budget that will be passed, but it is a quantitative look at what this White House thinks government should look like. So in that sense, it’s helpful.
INSKEEP: NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben, you’re always helpful. thank you so much.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.
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