President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth want more money for the U.S military.
Trump said the Pentagon’s annual budget could soon pass the $1 trillion mark.
“$1 trillion, and nobody’s seen anything like it,” Trump said. “We have to build our military, and we’re very cost conscious, but the military is something that we have to build, and we have to be strong, because you got a lot of bad forces out there now.”
Hegseth quickly praised the plan.
“Thank you Mr. President! COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar @DeptofDefense budget,” Hegseth wrote on X. “President @realDonaldTrump is rebuilding our military – and FAST.
In a post-script, Hegseth added: “We intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely – on lethality and readiness.”
The 2026 presidential budget for the U.S. Department of Defense has yet to be released.
Over the past three years, the Defense Department’s budget has increased from about $700 billion to $850 billion.
Trump’s plans for a bigger defense budget come weeks after he and Hegseth unveiled plans for a sixth-generation stealth fighter jet. In March, Trump said the U.S. Air Force was moving ahead with the F-47 program, which Hegseth called the “Next Generation of Air Dominance.” At the time, Trump said the cost of the Next Generation of Air Dominance platform would be kept secret. He also said he wouldn’t reveal how many planes the Air Force had ordered from Boeing.
The plan for a bigger budget comes even as Hegseth looks to make strategic cuts to the federal government’s largest and most expensive agency.
The Pentagon is working toward deeper cuts to its civilian workforce after about 21,000 civilian employees volunteered for a federal Deferred Resignation Program. The department wants to cut 5% to 8% of civilian employees, or about 50,000 to 60,000 employees.
In addition to the Deferred Resignation Program, Pentagon officials expect to cut about 6,000 employees per month in the coming months through Hegseth’s hiring freeze. Hegseth said the cuts can be done without affecting military readiness.
The U.S. government employs about 2.4 million federal workers, excluding the military (about 1.3 million active-duty military personnel) and U.S. Postal Service (about 600,000 employees), according to 2024 Pew Research report. That report noted that the federal government employed 1.87% of the entire civilian workforce. That percentage includes postal employees, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
