Senior Trump administration officials promised they would push through a roughly $1 trillion military budget for the coming year, even as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project aims to drastically shrink federal spending.
“We’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military,” Trump said Monday during a White House event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“$1 trillion,” Trump said elsewhere during the meeting. “Nobody has seen anything like it.”
The president added that some of the funding to pay for the increase would come from savings under DOGE.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised the president after the announcement and said Trump “is rebuilding our military — and FAST.”
“We intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness,” he wrote on X.
The proposed fiscal year 2026 budget would represent a roughly 12 percent increase over this year’s $892 billion military budget, and comes as each military branch is working to cut 8 percent of its spending each year for the next five years and invest the savings in modernization efforts.
The Pentagon is also looking to cut tens of thousands of civilian roles and consolidate bases across the world as part of the Trump administration’s savings push.
In February, the president said he wanted to forge an agreement between Rusia, China, and the U.S. to halve their defense budgets.
“I'm going to say there's no reason for us to be spending almost a trillion dollars on military,” Trump said of his pitch at the time.
Increase the military budget to $1 trillion would complicate the administration’s stated aim of reducing the budget deficit, and of slashing billions from federal spending through DOGE.
It would also mark a year area of increased investment for the administration, which has sought massive cuts and thousands of layoffs and retirements at marquee government agencies like the Social Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
Elsewhere during the meeting with Netanyahu, Trump said the U.S. will have “direct talks” with Iran, though Iran subsequently denied any exchange would be direct.
The talks could impact U.S. military concerns like Iran’s nuclear ambitions and that country backing Houthi rebels, who have attacked ships in the Mediterranean in protest of the Israel-Hamas war.
