By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, April 07, 2026
If he has to choose between guns and butter, President
Trump has made it clear he wants the guns.
This is the right choice for our national
security and reflects, as well, a correct assessment of what should be the
federal government’s top priority — not funding social services, but providing
for the common defense.
Trump’s new budget proposes a $1.5 trillion defense budget in
fiscal year 2027, a staggering 40 percent year-over-year increase.
At the same time, it outlines a 10 percent cut in
so-called domestic discretionary programs (a category excluding entitlement
programs like Medicare and Social Security).
Progressives consider this tantamount to a crime against
humanity.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the budget
“rotten to the core.” Senator Patty Murray of Washington said its vision is
“bleak and unacceptable.” Her colleague from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, deemed the
document “an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs, and less for
the things people need.”
Well, people need a military to protect us from enemies
who want to kill Americans and end U.S. geopolitical preeminence, bringing all
manner of negative consequences for our economy and safety.
We are not exactly living in a time of reassuring
stability. The U.S. is embroiled in a war in the Middle East that has rocked
global energy markets, while Russia has repeatedly invaded a neighboring
country to its west, and China could be on the cusp of precipitating the
greatest major-power conflict since World War II.
This is not a time when — if one ever existed — the fate
of the country depends on robust federal funding for, say, community
development block grants.
Trump intuits as much. “The United States can’t take care
of daycare,” he said last week. “That has to be up to a state. We’re fighting
wars. Medicaid, Medicare — they can do it on a state basis. We have to take
care of one thing: military protection.”
Fighting and deterring wars should indeed be the prime
responsibility of the federal government, rather than sending federal dollars
sluicing throughout the nation to fund priorities large and small, worthy and
utterly ridiculous.
In characteristic fashion, the New York Times noted
of Trump’s budget that some of “the most severe cuts would reduce or eliminate
funding that benefits minority groups and their communities” and also remarked
that the administration seeks “to scrap money designed to reduce racial
disparities in health and those supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender people.”
The mock headline writes itself: “Trump Seeks World-Class
Military — Minorities and LGBTQ+ Community Hardest Hit.”
There is no doubt that the scale of Trump’s budget, which
would be the biggest single-year increase in defense spending since the Korean
War, is equal to the challenge that we face. Much depends, though, on what
specifically the budget funds, and how effectively the money is eventually
spent.
In broad gauge, the priorities are the right ones,
reflecting a new age of high-tech warfare and our shortfalls in shipbuilding.
The Pentagon is requesting $11.36 billion for Air Force
missile procurement in 2027, an enormous increase from $3.7 billion in 2026.
The missile budget is projected to keep growing. In 2029, it would be $16
billion, an eightfold increase from 2021.
Space Force would get a 77 percent increase.
As for the Navy, it wants roughly $65 billion for
building ships, more than doubling the $27.2 billion from 2026.
In terms of bang for the buck, the administration has
begun to fund more nimble, tech-driven defense firms while it pushes the
traditional big players like Boeing and Lockheed to become faster and more
efficient.
As a practical matter, the president is unlikely to get
all the defense spending that he wants from Congress, which, when confronted
with a choice between guns and butter, always chooses both.
But Trump is right to go big and to focus on the federal
spending that could win or lose a war and determine our fate as a great power.
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