The White House proposed a 2027 budget last week that would push military spending to $1.5 trillion, a 42% jump from 2026, while cutting the Department of Health and Human Services budget by more than $15 billion. The non-defense side of the government would be cut by 10%, even as the Pentagon’s appetite for money keeps growing faster than the rest of the budget can shrink.
Trump made the choice plain at an Easter lunch reception last week. “We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country,” he said. That line now sits behind a budget that would give the military vastly more, not just more than health and human services, but more than the entire non-defense side of the government can absorb in cuts.
The numbers show why the plan matters now. The proposed military budget would reach $1.5 trillion in 2027, up 42% from 2026, while the proposed HHS cut would be 12% less than this year and the broader non-defense reduction would be 10%. The fiscal squeeze is not theoretical: the article says the Pentagon spent $12.7 billion in the first six days of the war against Iran and $28 billion in a little over five weeks, a pace that shows how quickly defense spending can swallow large sums when Washington decides it needs them.
That is where the budget runs into its own arithmetic. The article says the proposed non-defense cuts are nowhere near enough to cover the increase in defense spending, which means the White House is not really trading one side of the ledger for the other. It is enlarging the military bill and asking the rest of government to make do with less, even after last year’s “big, beautiful bill” cut more than $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
Those earlier cuts still hang over this proposal because they came with new pressure on the health system. Some analysts say the Medicaid work requirements tied to that law could push 15 million Americans to lose health insurance. More broadly, Americans are the most likely among their peer group to skip doctor appointments, skip medical tests and skimp on prescription drugs because of cost, which makes another round of health cuts harder to dismiss as bookkeeping. The budget sent up last week makes the priority clear. It is a bet that military protection comes first, and that the rest of the government will pay for it.