Trump to ask Congress for record national security budget, Bloomberg

The figure that Trump will request is more than 13% higher than this year’s figure.

US President Donald Trump will request a record $1.01 trillion from Congress for national security before the start of the new fiscal year, which begins on October 1. This is reported by Bloomberg .

Sources in the administration familiar with the matter told reporters that this is more than 13% higher than the current year’s figure.

It is expected that the main priorities will include funding for the Golden Dome missile defense project, shipbuilding and modernization of the nuclear arsenal, as well as border security. The US defense budget will include a 3.8% increase in military salaries.

“The total request, which includes defense support funding for the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other smaller agencies, is about 3.2% of GDP, which is comparable to the figure for fiscal year 2024. This is more than the $892.3 billion in total national security spending this year,” the journalists write.

The budget is expected to be presented on May 2. According to the publication, this will allow lawmakers to begin work on appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026.

It is noted that this would be a step forward compared to a proposal put forward in November by former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who sought approval of a five-year plan dedicated exclusively to defense. It originally envisaged the allocation of $926.5 billion in fiscal year 2026.

“The Pentagon request alone is $961 billion, compared to $848.3 billion approved in January. The Biden administration last year projected a defense-only budget of $876.8 billion,” journalists quoted White House officials as saying.

The publication emphasized that Trump had previously explained the scale of such a request by the growth of global threats.

“We have to build an army. We are very careful about spending, but we have to build an army,” he said.

Trump’s defense spending policy

As UNIAN reported, in February it became known that Musk and Trump want to “optimize” the Pentagon budget by hundreds of billions of dollars. According to the Financial Times, the US president claimed that the Pentagon, whose annual budget is about $800 billion, will soon be in the sights of the “Department of Efficiency.”

At the same time, Trump said he was not sure the US should spend money on NATO. He demanded that other members of the alliance spend 5% of their GDP on defense.

(C)UNIAN 2025