Trump $2.2 Trillion Budget Pairs Defense Boost, Agency Cuts

President Donald Trump asked Congress to enact a $2.2 trillion budget for discretionary programs, seeking a massive increase in defense spending, while also renewing his push for steep cuts to domestic agencies.

The 2027 budget proposal released on Friday requests $1.5 trillion for defense, a significant increase over the $1 trillion sought for fiscal year 2026. The new figure includes $1.1 trillion in base discretionary spending for the Department of Defense and another $350 billion in mandatory spending. The Office of Management and Budget is also still reviewing a potential $200 billion Pentagon supplemental package for the current fiscal year that would be on top of Friday’s request as the US carries out its war in Iran. Bloomberg's Nathan Dean joins Balance of Power to discuss what this means for the midterms. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) hopes to schedule floor votes by the end of this month that would pave the way for a GOP-only bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies, according to his spokesman.

Thune plans to have the chamber adopt a budget resolution with instructions for relevant committees to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol — the first step to meet President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline for Congress to restore base funding to those agencies. Republicans are using the complex budget reconciliation process, which kicks off with a so-called vote-a-rama on a topline resolution.

Democrats would get the chance to offer an unlimited number of amendments during the vote-a-rama, giving them opportunities to force Republicans into politically uncomfortable positions before lawmakers leave again for the next recess.

Since the Department of Homeland Security’s funding lapsed in mid-February after the two parties deadlocked on changes to law enforcement practices, those agencies’ core functions have been paid instead out of last year’s tax-and-spending law.

Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have agreed to fund non-immigration agencies housed in the Department of Homeland Security like the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Coast Guard through the bipartisan appropriations process while lawmakers trudge through the byzantine process of circumventing Democrats to pay for parts of the department that oversee immigration.

The Senate’s budget resolution would need to win the approval of the House before Republicans would embark on the second phase of sending partisan funding to Trump’s desk. But some members of Johnson’s caucus have been agitating to simply fund the entire department without Democrats.

“There’s a school of thought in the House that you could do the entire Homeland Security bill through a reconciliation process,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said on Fox News on Saturday. “That’s the discussion that I expect to be fleshed out over the next five, six days.”

Leadership will have to overcome pressure to add additional items to the package, which lawmakers could seek to leverage as a vehicle to enact a host of fiscal policies that didn’t get into last year’s tax-and-spending law.

“They want to keep it as narrow as possible,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told reporters Monday. “But just as we’ve seen in the past, anytime you say it’s going to be narrow, it does tend to broaden out as we try and get more members on board.”

Both chambers are on recess until early next week. Pressure to end the longest agency shutdown in US history has eased since Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to pa

--------

Watch Bloomberg Radio LIVE on YouTube

Weekdays 7am-6pm ET

Follow us on X

Subscribe to our Podcasts:

Bloomberg Daybreak

Bloomberg Surveillance

Bloomberg Intelligence

Balance of Power

Bloomberg Businessweek

Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app:

Apple CarPlay

Android Auto

Visit our YouTube channels:

Bloomberg Podcasts

Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Originals