President Donald Trump last week announced new plans for a $1 trillion defense budget in 2026. Trump bragged about his big plans for spending ever larger amounts of taxpayer funds, stating at a meeting with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu that “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 … $1 trillion. Nobody has seen anything like it.” An increase in military spending to $1 trillion is a funding increase of more than $100 billion, or 12 percent. It would be the largest single-year increase since 2004, during the early years of the Iraq war.
Trump made no mention of earlier claims that his administration would cut overall federal spending while cutting the federal government’s annual deficit.
