Top Senate defense appropriator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week the Donald Trump administration’s defense budget outline, which factors in planned reconciliation spending to achieve a $1 trillion topline, “fails” to meet the required level of investment.
McConnell Tuesday criticized the decision to include anticipated reconciliation funds as a “budgetary sleight of hand.”
“American politicians have criticized partners who used special funds to mask shortcomings in annual defense spending. Well, we should be careful not to mistake our budget reconciliation for long-term commitment, either,” McConnell said in remarks at the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ (CSIS) Global Security Forum.
The Office of Management and Budget earlier this month rolled out the administration’s “skinny” budget proposal for fiscal year 2026, with the White House touting an “unprecedented” 13% boost in defense spending.
The proposed $1 trillion defense topline includes a base budget request that would remain flat from fiscal 2025 at around $893 billion and a factoring in a $113 billion increase that would come from funds in the pending reconciliation bill.
“These increases would be made possible through budget reconciliation, which would allow them to be enacted with simple majorities in the Congress, and not be held hostage by Democrats for wasteful nondefense spending increases as was the case in President Trump’s first term,” the White House previously said of its proposal.
The budget outline received swift pushback from several senior Republicans, including McConnell, who have advocated for significant increases in defense spending, to include boosting the topline to 5% of GDP.
McConnell at CSIS said he supports using the reconciliation bill to make a “significant, one-time investment” in defense, while adding he believes it’s “as dangerous as it is profoundly unserious” to use those dollars to account for full-year appropriations.
“Reconciliation spending may fund short-term operations or investments, but without sustained annual growth, it risks creating massive cliffs in sustainment, personnel, and procurement costs,” McConnell said.
“Making urgent, nimble, innovative discretionary investments won’t get any easier if we cut the topline in real terms or force the defense enterprise to innovate for today’s challenges with yesterday’s dollars,” McConnell said. “Coming up short on America’s topline commitment to the national defense sends an unmistakable signal to the allies and partners who, for decades, have bet big on American technologies and American leadership.”
A version of this article was first published on Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily.
