Russ Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, testifies before the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee on April 15, 2026. (Screenshot from the committee’s webcast)
WASHINGTON – The White House budget director on Wednesday defended the administration’s latest request to Congress, testifying before the House Budget Committee that a 43% increase in defense spending and a 10% cut in domestic programs was the best path forward.
Democrats on the panel were highly critical of the proposal, which lawmakers will debate in the coming months and is unlikely to be fully adopted.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, the committee’s ranking member, said the administration’s demand to increase defense spending so significantly without strengthening health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid or helping people pay for child care “reflects an expression of priorities that are out of step with what Americans really need.”
Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said during the three-hour hearing that the government is convinced that a significant increase in defense spending “is intended for significant investment in a paradigm shift”.
“For example, the president and his War Department are showing tremendous leadership to build ships, planes, drones, munitions and satellites more quickly without falling behind the status quo,” he said. “In order for the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities and not just add shifts, multi-year purchase agreements are required for the future. These costs must be accounted for in the first year.”
Vought said the administration prefers that Republicans put in about $1.15 trillion in the annual defense spending bill, which requires bipartisan support in the Senate to pass, and another $350 billion in a budget reconciliation bill that Republicans can advance on their own.
He believes this avoids Democrats’ requirement that every $1 increase in defense spending be matched by a $1 increase in domestic spending.
“This Congress has changed the way we can spend money in the reconciliation process to avoid the pitfalls that have really led to our inability to get anywhere for two decades,” he said. “And I think you should be commended for that.”
Republicans appointed the sophisticated process of budget reconciliation last year to pass their “big, beautiful” law, and want to introduce another reconciliation bill in the coming months that would do the same further boost spending on immigration enforcement activities.
No figures on Iran’s war spending
Vought testified before the committee that he could not yet provide a abrasive estimate of how much additional defense spending the administration plans to ask Congress to provide for the war in Iran.
“We’re not ready to come to you with a request yet. We’re still working on it,” he said. “We are working to figure out what is needed this fiscal year versus next fiscal year.”
The current fiscal year ends on September 30th.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee expressed concerns about what such a enormous increase in defense spending would mean for a department that has done so constantly struggled to be accountable for all his expenses during several audits.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington questioned whether the Trump administration was grave about fighting fraud across all departments given its proposal to increase Defense Department funding by more than half a trillion dollars.
Vought responded that “the department is making progress on the review.”
Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin was even more frustrated with the leadership at the Defense Department, saying that “there is so much arrogance in this agency.”
“I keep backing down because defense is the most important thing. And they just say, ‘We don’t have to do an audit. We’re so damn important. We don’t care what Congress thinks,'” Grothman said. “I hope they do this exam and have the guys working around the clock to complete an exam by July 31, or before we have to pass this exam at some point.”
Vought wanted to reassure Grothman and other lawmakers on the panel that the Trump administration does want to address the Defense Department’s spending.
“The idea that we’re not trying to find any inefficiencies in the Department of Defense is not true,” Vought said. “In our view, we want to encourage them to be able to invest in procurement and research.”
What’s next?
The House Appropriations Committee won’t actually draft the 12 annual government funding bills.
That’s up to the Appropriations Committee, which will hold hearings with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads in the coming weeks to learn more the President’s budget request for the fiscal year scheduled to begin on October 1st.
The budget subcommittees will then draft and debate the spending bills, which represent a fraction of that the $7 trillion federal budget. A much larger share of annual funding, about $4.2 trillion, goes to mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Another $970 billion will go toward interest payments on the debt.
While most defense spending goes to the Pentagon and some to the Energy Department for nuclear security programs, the domestic spending that the administration wants to cut overall is split among dozens of agencies.
The departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, State, Veterans Affairs, and numerous smaller agencies all share total spending on domestic programs.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, defense spending totaled $893 billion in fiscal year 2025, which ended last September, while non-defense programs received $980 billion.
