Sen. Mark Kelly says Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request is “outrageous”

Washington — Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said Sunday that the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion budget request for defense spending is “outrageous.”

“They need to submit a defense budget that makes sense for the moment we’re in,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

Last month, the administration released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, which serves as a starting point for negotiations with Congress over annual spending. The proposal would mark a 42% increase in defense spending from 2026 levels.

“When I got to the Senate five and a half years ago, the defense budget was just over $700 billion,” Kelly said. “Now they’re asking for twice as much money — it’s nearly the amount that the rest of the world pays for its defense.”

Kelly, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said some of the budget proposal’s components pose serious difficulties. In addition to a pay raise for troops and resupplying critical munitions, the funds would also go toward building a space-based “Golden Dome” missile defense system, among other things. 

“There’s stuff in there, like Golden Dome,” he said. “The physics on that stuff is really, really hard. I’m very confident we’re going to spend a lot of money, we’re going to get a system that doesn’t work.”

Along with the budget request, the White House is expected to ask Congress for a supplemental spending package to cover the cost of the war with Iran. A Pentagon official said at a congressional hearings late last month that the cost of the war was about $25 billion. But U.S. officials familiar with internal assessments suggested at the time that the Iran war’s price tag could be closer to $50 billion.

Meanwhile, Kelly expressed concern about the state of the U.S.’ munitions stockpile amid the war with Iran, citing Pentagon briefings detailing specific munitions. 

“I think it’s fair to say it’s shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines, because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline,” Kelly said.

The Arizona Democrat said “because of that, we’ve expended a lot of munitions, and that means the American people are less safe.”

“Whether it’s a conflict in the western Pacific with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted,” he said.