Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she has “serious objections” to the defense funding proposals in President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request, while also taking issue with some of the nondefense programs being targeted.
In a statement on Friday, Collins called Trump’s request “simply one step in the annual budget process,” adding the “request has come to Congress late, and key details still remain outstanding.”
“Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research,” Collins said, referring to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Department of Education student outreach programs.
She added, “ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse.”
“The Appropriations Committee has an aggressive hearing schedule to learn more about the President’s proposal and assess funding needs for the coming year.”
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought told Collins in a letter Friday morning that the presidential request calls for a 13 percent increase in defense spending that would allow for a total of roughly $1 trillion for fiscal 2026. At the same time, the proposed budget calls for steep cuts to nondefense programs.
The budget assumes some of the increase would be provided through Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill that Republicans are working to assemble in Congress.
Their hope is to use a process known as budget reconciliation to advance the president’s tax agenda, while also making further cuts to spending and boosting funding for defense and the president’s deportation plans. While the process can be time-consuming and restrictive, it would ultimately allow Republicans to jam through such a package without having to worry about likely Democratic opposition in the Senate.
“Under the proposal, a portion of these increases-at least $325 billion assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed to by the Congress-would be provided through reconciliation, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources needed to complete the mission,” Vought wrote.
However, defense hawks have been pushing back on the proposal.
“President Trump successfully campaigned on a Peace Through Strength agenda, but his advisers at the Office of Management and Budget were apparently not listening,” Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in a statement Friday. “For the defense budget, OMB has requested a fifth year straight of Biden administration funding, leaving military spending flat, which is a cut in real terms.”
Wicker added that he has said “for months that reconciliation defense spending does not replace the need for real growth in the military’s base budget.”
“That is what I will work to achieve in Congress with President Trump and [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth to implement the President’s Peace Through Strength agenda.”
In defending the budget on Friday, Vought later wrote on social platform X that the president’s strategy is aimed at increasing “defense spending to $1 trillion,” while also “ensuring that only Republican-votes are needed by using reconciliation to secure those increases without Democrats insisting on increasing wasteful government.”
Hard-line conservatives are backing the strategy on X, with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) calling the move a “wise paradigm shift” whereby Republicans would “no longer let Democrats hold defense hostage for woke, weaponized bureaucrats – AND – we fund REAL defense modernization on OUR terms in reconciliation.”
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