Russell Vought faced down a noisy House Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday as protesters were ejected from the chamber before he finished opening remarks defending President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget. The plan would put $1.5 trillion into defense, a roughly 44% increase over current levels, while cutting nondefense discretionary programs by 10% across the board.
Vought told lawmakers the proposal was designed to keep the United States “the world’s most powerful and capable military” in what he called an increasingly dangerous time. The administration’s budget also includes reductions to Medicaid, housing assistance, childcare and home energy aid for low-income seniors, setting up another fight over how far the White House is willing to go to shift federal spending away from domestic programs.
The hearing landed in the middle of a broader argument over federal priorities, with the national debt already near $39 trillion and Trump pushing a budget that leans hard toward defense. Vought began by saying the plan builds on the historic $1 trillion defense top line for fiscal year 2026 and asked Congress to approve $1.5 trillion for 2027, while the White House has kept pressing the idea that some social spending should be pushed closer to the states.
That message was on display again when Vought was asked about Medicare. Trump had said at a private White House Easter lunch that “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” and also argued that Medicaid and Medicare should be pushed to the states. Vought told the committee the administration had taken no steps to turn Medicare over to the states and added, “The president doesn’t want to do that.”
The domestic cuts drew sharp pushback from Democrats. Becca Balint asked whether $350 billion for the ongoing U.S.-Iran war actually helped reduce costs for Americans, pressing Vought on a budget that trims childcare even as it expands military spending. Vought said childcare is “fully funded” in the budget, a line that clashed with the breadth of the reductions elsewhere in the plan.
Morgan McGarvey then pointed to a provision he said would slash the fruit and vegetable benefit for breastfeeding mothers under the WIC nutrition program from $52 to $13 a month. Vought replied, “We fully fund the WIC program.” McGarvey shot back, “No, you don’t. It’s right here.” The exchange captured the central dispute in the room: whether the administration is protecting safety-net programs or simply redefining what full funding means.
The fight over the budget is unfolding against a fiscal backdrop that has only grown more precarious. The Congressional Budget Office has said the One Big Beautiful Bill enacted last year adds more to the deficit than any single piece of legislation in American history, and the Congressional Budget Office and the Kaiser Family Foundation have said it could strip health care coverage from as many as 15 million to 17 million Americans. Those numbers hung over another tense exchange when Boyle asked Vought whether those people were all in the country illegally or defrauding the system. Vought answered, “I didn’t say all of them are illegal,” and added, “also the benefit of people returning to the workforce.”
For now, the White House is asking Congress to back a budget that protects defense, trims domestic aid and shrugs off the political costs of both. The question is no longer whether the plan will draw resistance. It already has. The question is whether enough lawmakers will accept its central bargain: more money for war-fighting power, less for the programs millions of Americans use to make ends meet.