What The $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Buys — And What it Cuts

Munitions, Drones, and the F-47

The Iran war burned through missile stockpiles at a rate that surprised even the Pentagon. The budget allocates funding for 12 critical munition types to rebuild and expand the defense industrial base for scalable production. Translation: we shot a lot of expensive things at Iran and need to buy more.

The budget also includes “unprecedented investments” in unmanned systems — part of a “drone dominance” initiative — along with continued development of the F-47, a sixth-generation fighter jet targeting first flight by 2028. AI integration across the force is also a major line item, including the expansion of the Pentagon’s GenAI.mil platform.

Troop Pay Raise: 5–7%

The one item in the defense budget that directly helps human beings: a 5% to 7% pay raise for military personnel. This is genuinely needed — military pay has lagged inflation for years, and recruitment has been a persistent problem. No argument here. But it’s worth noting that a 7% raise for all 1.3 million active-duty troops costs roughly $13 billion. That’s less than 1% of the total budget. The other 99% is hardware.

Here’s the Spend, in a Table

Now Here’s What’s Getting Cut

This is where the budget shifts from a defense document to a values statement. Because the $1.5 trillion doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s offset — partially — by $73 billion in cuts to everything that isn’t a weapon. The White House budget document used the word “woke” 34 times to describe programs targeted for elimination. Thirty-four. In a federal budget document.

National Institutes of Health — Cut $5 Billion

The NIH — the agency that funds cancer research, Alzheimer’s studies, and the development of vaccines— gets a $5 billion haircut, dropping its funding from $47 billion to $41 billion. The White House says NIH “broke the trust of the American people.”

The budget also proposes eliminating three entire NIH institutes, including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health gets axed too.

One Tomahawk cruise missile costs $3.5 million. The NIH’s entire budget for minority health disparities research is roughly $3.2 billion. We fired hundreds of Tomahawks in two days during the Iran opening salvo. But studying health disparities? That’s the waste they found.

NASA — Cut $5.6 Billion (23%)

The space agency that put humans on the moon gets a 23% budget cut, dropping to $18.8 billion. The Science Mission Directorate — the part that actually does science — takes a 47% hit, losing $3.4 billion. More than 40 missions are slated for termination, including the Mars Sample Return.

The SERVIR program, which uses satellite data to help developing countries respond to climate disasters, is eliminated because it “imposed climate extremism on developing countries.” Climate extremism. From satellites.

The Office of STEM Engagement — NASA’s education arm — is eliminated entirely. In a country that can’t fill engineering jobs.

At least Artemis survives. The budget puts $8.5 billion toward landing astronauts on the Moon by 2028. So we can still do that, as long as nobody needs to study the science of getting there.

Environmental Protection Agency — Cut 52%

The EPA gets cut in half. A $4.6 billion reduction bringing it to its lowest funding level since the Reagan administration — the 1980s. The atmospheric-protection program is eliminated entirely because it prioritized “the cult of ‘climate change.'” That’s a direct quote from the budget.

Environmental justice programs? Gone. Over $1 billion in grants that help states enforce the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act? Cut. $2.5 billion from state revolving loan funds for clean water infrastructure? Slashed. The Superfund program that cleans up toxic waste sites in American communities? Defunded.

The agency responsible for making sure your drinking water doesn’t kill you is being gutted so the Pentagon can build a battleship named after the President. I suppose even with an $8 billion budget there are still some places with unsafe drinking water. Nothing is working. 

Everything Else on the Chopping Block

The Reconciliation Trick

Here’s the structural play nobody’s talking about enough. Of the $1.5 trillion, the White 

House wants $1.1 trillion to go through regular appropriations — the normal process that requires bipartisan support. The remaining $350 billion? Through budget reconciliation — a procedural maneuver that bypasses the Senate filibuster and can pass with a simple party-line majority.

That means $350 billion in defense spending — the size of the entire defense budget of most NATO countries — could be approved without a single Democratic vote. Reconciliation was designed for tax and spending adjustments. It’s now being used to fund battleships and missile constellations.

This isn’t just a budget. It’s a structural attempt to remove bipartisan negotiation from defense spending. If it works, future administrations can use the same playbook. The implications for democratic governance of the military budget are enormous, and almost nobody in Congress is raising the alarm.