A $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget? Not So Fast, Experts Warn

President Donald Trump declared in a social media post Jan. 7 that he would propose a $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027—a record-breaking figure that called to mind the Reagan buildup of the 1980s. Now, nearly eight months later, the chances such a budget might pass are fading fast.

The House of Representatives is working on a $1.07 trillion defense bill and passed $60 billion supplemental measure to cover war costs. The Senate has passed nothing. And grand hopes for a third bill dubbed “Reconciliation 3.0” that might have made up the difference now seem slim at best.

Just how much the final Pentagon budget tally will be is still anyone’s guess. How that will affect the Air Force and Space Force is in flux. Understanding it all means wading through continuing resolutions, supplemental requests, and discretionary vs. mandatory funding.

“It’s really a mess,” said Todd Harrison, a longtime defense budget analyst, now at the American Enterprise Institute. “Like, an unprecedented level of mess.”

The White House has asked Congress to fund $1.567 trillion in defense requests this year, split into three bills:

$1.15 trillion in the fiscal 2027 base “discretionary” budget, the usual annual appropriation for defense
$350 billion in “mandatory” spending, intended to be passed using a congressional maneuver called a reconciliation bill, which circumvents the Senate’s requirement for 60 votes to pass a bill. That lets Senate Republicans push through a party-line vote on a measure without any Democrats’ support.
$67.1 billion included in a supplemental funding request submitted in June, with much of that money paying the cost of the Iran war, while the balance funds other administration priorities.

The Senate—controlled 53-47 by Republicans—has yet to move on any appropriations legislation. The House, however, with Republicans holding a slim 219-212 majority, has made progress on two bills:

The House Appropriations Committee approved a $1.07 trillion defense appropriations bill on June 24, largely sticking to the Pentagon’s 2027 base “discretionary” budget. A vote on the House floor is pending, but not yet scheduled.
The House approved a budget resolution July 22 in favor of advancing a reconciliation bill that includes $60 billion in military spending.

Meanwhile, time is running out on the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The House approved a continuing resolution this week to fund the government at 2026 levels through Dec. 4. Doing so would buy lawmakers two months time to pass a budget. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said July 21 that he is asking Senate appropriators to reach an agreement on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through the midterm elections scheduled for Nov. 3.

He has not addressed when the base budget might come up for a vote in the Senate and played down the notion that the Senate might act quickly on the House’s reconciliation framework.

White House vs. Congress: Budget Comparison

As it did with the fiscal 2026 spending plan, the Pentagon’s 2027 budget request rolled out in April splits the request between normal appropriations and reconciliation. “For a lot of the stuff that’s in the reconciliation side of things, we took things and put them there when there was new technology and we didn’t have a defined program,” explained a defense official earlier this year.

The total Department of the Air Force budget request was $338.8 billion, divided between $310.6 billion in the base “discretionary” budget and $28.2 billion in “mandatory” reconciliation funds. Among other line items, the reconciliation package included money for new Space Force targeting satellites and Air Force munitions, plus 14 F-35 fighter jets.

Republican leaders initially intended to wrap the reconciliation funds into the so-called Reconciliation 2.0—a follow-on to the bill passed in summer 2025 known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” But a dispute over funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement tied that up.

The next plan, endorsed by President Trump in social media posts, was to pass Reconciliation 3.0. But in the interim, the cost and politics of the war with Iran created additional political hurdles, with Democrats and some Republicans objecting to the war and other Republicans objecting to more spending without corresponding budget cuts elsewhere.

The upshot is that House leaders unveiled a $95 billion “Reconciliation 3.0” budget resolution including just $60 billion for defense—$290 billion less than the White House wanted. That $60 billion has yet to be earmarked for specific accounts, but according to House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) the measure “is not … the $350 billion request that the President submitted … It’s the emergency supplemental.”

Some House GOP leaders have floated the idea of “Reconciliation 4.0” to fund the original $350 billion Pentagon request. House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is still working with the House House to fulfill that, a spokesman told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Harrison is skeptical that will happen: “I think this is a sign that the $350 billion is all but dead, if they could not get that in the third reconciliation bill.”

Seamus Daniels, a budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, echoed that thought. He cited “significant doubt that Congress will be able to pass any figure close to $350 billion for reconciliation this year.”

Byron Callan, of Capital Alpha Partners, pegged the odds of such a bill passing at just 15 percent.

Analysts’ pessimism is driven by the political dynamics of today’s narrow legislative majorities, which leave little room for intraparty differences. Republican fiscal hawks want offsetting cuts to cover the cost of any new spending; moderates in competitive states and districts worry such cuts to discretionary nondefense programs will cost them votes in November; appropriators dislike how the reconciliation process circumvents their authority over spending; and other members dislike the reconciliation’s “vote-a-ramas,” which force public votes on amendments that can highlight politically sensitive issues close to an election.

“The challenge … is the fact that it is a midterm elections year, so that $60 billion is likely a much more palatable palatable number for Republicans to get behind, between budget hawks and defense hawks, ahead of a midterm election that will focus significantly on the cost of living,” Daniels said.

Had there been enough support for the $350 billion figure among Republicans, the analysts say, leadership would have included that figure in Reconciliation 3.0.