STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The White House has released its 2027 budget request, a request to Congress. This budget proposed includes record spending for the Defense Department - $1.5 trillion in a single year. The budget also cuts other programs. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben is covering this from the White House. Danielle, good morning.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I was thinking of asking you to go through the $1.5 trillion just, you know, dollar by dollar. Just figure out how each dollar is spent, but time is limited, so...
KURTZLEBEN: Settle in, Steve. Let's do this.
INSKEEP: OK. Go for it. What can you tell us?
KURTZLEBEN: All right. Well, let's just do the summary, then. The biggest point here by far is that this budget would boost defense spending to, yeah, like you said, $1.5 trillion in a year, and that would be the biggest level in modern history. According to the White House, that would be a 42% increase from total fiscal year 2026...
INSKEEP: Wow.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Defense resources. Yes.
INSKEEP: And that was already pretty high, but go on.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah, absolutely. And of course, this comes as Trump has initiated war with Iran, which we've been in for around five weeks now. There have also been military operations in Venezuela and the Caribbean. Now, the White House wants some of this money - 350 billion - to get passed through Congress soon as part of Congress' efforts to finish funding the Department of Homeland Security. The budget also calls for about 73 billion in spending cuts, most of that from domestic spending. So that's things like climate, housing, social services and health care.
INSKEEP: I'm just doing some math in my head. So four, 500 billion extra for defense. Seventy-three billion less for other stuff. So we're increasing the deficit. We're borrowing more. But where do you get the 73 billion in spending cuts from?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, like I said, things like climate and housing, as the White House puts it, the savings will be achieved by, quote, "reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized and wasteful programs" and also by pushing some obligations back on states. Now, woke, weaponized and wasteful - those do not have precise legal or accounting definitions, so you can imagine that the White House has its own ideas of what those are.
INSKEEP: If I had a dollar for every alliterative phrase in government, though, we would have a balanced budget. But go on, please.
KURTZLEBEN: It's a very good point. Well, so Trump has named Vice President JD Vance his fraud czar, and he does hope to recoup some government spending by cracking down on fraud and abuse. Trump said Friday that Vance would focus on fraud everywhere but primarily on blue states. And on returning some spending obligations back on states, Trump was really pretty revealing this week during a speech before religious leaders on Wednesday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It's not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing - military protection. We have to guard the country.
KURTZLEBEN: So he's being really explicit there about how social safety net programs, even Medicare, which is beloved by many, including Republicans in his base - to him, those can take a back seat to defense spending. And one more note here. That lunch where he made those remarks was not open to the press, but the White House posted a video of those full remarks before deleting it.
INSKEEP: Good thing that you saved it. So how likely is it that Congress is going to give the White House what it wants?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, the annual budget request is generally regarded as a blueprint of the White House's priorities. Congress, of course, approves and sets spending levels. So in a perfectly working system, the budget request would go to Congress. Congress would hold hearings with Trump officials, deliberate, create a budget resolution, then appropriations bills. But things haven't been working like that for decades. Lawmakers have struggled. They're still working on last year's budget work and funding DHS. So no, this exact budget won't pass, but this is a quantifiable look at how this White House thinks the government should look. So in that sense, it's helpful.
INSKEEP: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben, you are always helpful. Thank you so much.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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