Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought testifies before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Budget on April 15, 2026. (Screenshot from committee webcast)
WASHINGTON – The White House budget director on Wednesday defended the administration’s latest request to Congress, testifying before the House Budget Committee that the best solution is a 43% raise in defense spending and 10% cuts in domestic programs.
Democrats on the panel were highly critical of the proposal, which lawmakers will debate in the coming months and is unlikely to be fully approved.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, the committee’s ranking member, said the administration’s request to raise defense spending so significantly while not supporting health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid or helping people pay for child care “reflects misplaced priorities” relative to what Americans really need.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said during the conference three-hour interrogation that the administration believes that significant increases in defense spending “are earmarked for significant, paradigm-shifting investments.”
“For example, the president and his War Department are showing tremendous leadership in building ships, planes, drones, munitions and satellites faster, without the backlog of the status quo,” he said. “For the industrial base to double or triple in size and build more facilities, not just add change, multi-year contracts are needed for future purchases. This cost must be recognized in the first year.”
Vought said the administration’s preference is for Republicans to allocate about $1.15 trillion for the annual defense spending bill, which will require bipartisan support to pass the Senate, and allocate another $350 billion for a budget reconciliation bill that Republicans can submit on their own.
He believes this will avoid Democrats’ demands that every $1 raise in defense spending be accompanied by a $1 raise in domestic spending.
“This Congress changed the way we can spend money in the reconciliation process to avoid the pitfalls that have actually left us unable to achieve anything for two decades,” he said. – And I think you should be commended for that.
Republicans took advantage convoluted budget reconciliation process passed a “big, beautiful” law last year and plan to introduce another reconciliation bill in the coming months that further increasing spending on immigration enforcement activities.
No numbers on Iran’s war spending
Vought testified before the committee that he could not yet estimate how much additional defense spending the administration planned to ask Congress to secure a war in Iran.
“We are not ready to ask you. We are still working on it,” he said. “We are working to determine what is needed for this fiscal year versus next fiscal year.”
The current financial year will end on September 30.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee expressed concerns about what such a pointed raise in defense funding would mean for the department that did it he consistently tried to settle it all your expenses during several audits.
Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal questioned whether the Trump administration is earnest about addressing fraud in every department, given its proposal to raise funding for the Defense Department by more than half a trillion dollars.
Vought responded that “the department is making progress toward an audit.”
Wisconsin Republican Glenn Grothman was even more frustrated with leadership at the Defense Department, saying “there is so much arrogance in this agency.”
“I keep holding my nose 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 call this audit and have the guys work around the clock and finish the audit by July 31 or before we finally have to go through these things.”
Vought sought to assure Grothman and other lawmakers on the panel that the Trump administration does indeed want to address how the Defense Department spends money.
“The notion that we are not trying to find any wrongdoing within the Department of Defense is not true,” Vought said. “We think we would like to encourage these people to invest in public procurement and research.”
What’s next?
The House Budget Committee won’t actually develop a dozen annual government funding bills.
That’s up to the Appropriations Committee, which will hold hearings in the coming weeks with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to learn more about the president’s budget request for the financial year beginning October 1.
The appropriations subcommittees will then draft and discuss appropriations bills that are a fraction of the budget $7 trillion federal budget. A much larger share of annual funding, about $4.2 trillion, goes to mandatory programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Another $970 billion goes to paying interest on the debt.
While defense spending goes mostly to the Pentagon, with some to the Department of Energy for nuclear security programs, the domestic spending that the administration wants to cut overall is distributed 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 many smaller agencies share the total level of spending for national programs.
Defense spending totaled $893 billion in fiscal year 2025, which ended last September, while nondefense programs received $980 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
