Washington \u2014 Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said Sunday that the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion budget request for defense spending is “outrageous.”<\/p>\n
“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<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Last month, the administration released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n “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 \u2014 it’s nearly the amount that the rest of the world pays for its defense.”<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n 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<\/a>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n