{"id":112738,"date":"2026-04-20T09:23:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/trumps-1-5-trillion-defense-budget-could-be-political-suicide-for-republicans\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T09:23:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:23:50","slug":"trumps-1-5-trillion-defense-budget-could-be-political-suicide-for-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/en\/trumps-1-5-trillion-defense-budget-could-be-political-suicide-for-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget could be political suicide for Republicans."},"content":{"rendered":"


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I\u2019m old enough to remember when Republicans criticized Democrats for \u201cthrowing money at a problem.\u201d Now here comes President Donald Trump, proposing a military budget for next year of $1.5 trillion<\/a>, and most GOP lawmakers are just nodding.<\/p>\n

If passed, this would be, even when adjusted for inflation, the United States\u2019 largest defense budget ever<\/em>\u2014larger than the amount spent (again, adjusting for inflation) in any year during World War II<\/a>, when the nation\u2019s entire economy was geared to war.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden<\/a> was the first president who, just two years ago, nudged a military budget up against the $1 trillion mark. The world is a turbulent place, to the point where almost nobody in politics proposes cutting<\/em> defense spending. But is the world so turbulent, and is our position in it so precarious, that we need to increase the budget by almost 50 percent in a single year? Nobody in the Trump administration has made the case, and it\u2019s particularly puzzling, given that Trump\u2019s \u201cNational Security Strategy\u201d<\/a> proposed reducing<\/em> America\u2019s security commitments abroad.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say we do need to buy a lot more weapons. Are the weapons he proposes to buy in larger quantities the sorts of weapons we need? And to clarify matters, most of this $1.5 trillion will be spent on weapons. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touts that the budget includes a 7 percent pay hike<\/a> for members of the armed forces (about twice the national inflation rate), but the total proposed cost for military personnel<\/a> is just $205 billion (about 13 percent of the defense budget), which exceeds this year\u2019s amount by only $8 billion.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Trump and Hegseth propose boosting the budget for weapons procurement<\/a> from $223 billion to $413 billion\u2014a staggering 85 percent increase. Research and development for new weapons rise almost as steeply, from $210 billion to $344 billion\u2014a 64 percent increase.<\/p>\n

There is almost no precedent for such a surge.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has not yet released all the line items in the budget, so it\u2019s hard to break down these figures in much detail. Some of the growth seems somewhat related to advanced satellites (a $24 billion <\/em>increase for Space Force) and A.I. (a $42 billion increase for \u201cautonomous\u201d systems<\/a>). <\/em>But steeper increases (and larger stacks of money) go for traditional Cold War\u2013era systems, such as piloted combat planes (money for Navy aircraft alone doubles from $17 billion to $34 billion), and warships (up from $45 billion this year to $66 billion<\/a> next year).<\/p>\n

The warships are especially expensive ($13 billion<\/a> for a new USS Gerald Ford\u2013<\/em>class aircraft carrier, $2.7 billion<\/a> for a DDG-51 destroyer) and take many years to build. It could be argued we need more ships, but do we need the kinds of ships we\u2019re buying? They are far more capable than ships of older times, but they\u2019re also more vulnerable, given the swarms of anti-ship missiles and drones<\/a>, which, for instance, China has prepared to fire in case of a war near the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, some analysts noted that big ships were good for crisis management\u2014all those attack planes and missiles could intimidate an adversary\u2014but they should probably be moved out of harm\u2019s way if bullets started to fly. (Submarine crews have a related joke: \u201cThere are two kinds of warships\u2014submarines and targets.\u201d) This spring\u2019s war with Iran shows they\u2019re of limited use for crisis management: Two aircraft carriers and their escort ships didn\u2019t scare the Iranians into backing down. (However, against a country of limited military power, such as Iran, the carriers can still launch a lot of firepower.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another, more mundane problem with this budget, especially with the scads it devotes to shipbuilding\u2014the largest sum (adjusting for inflation) since 1962.<\/a> Even if Congress passes it, the Navy won\u2019t be able to spend it.<\/p>\n