White House eyes 8% cut to defense budget to boost Trump priorities

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a response from Pentagon leadership.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered senior military officials to develop a budget plan that would slash defense spending by 8%, a dramatic cut which could reshape military end-strength and readiness for decades.

In a memo first obtained by the Washington Post, Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be compiled by Feb. 24. Seventeen categories would be exempt from the budget reductions, including military operations at the southern U.S. border, nuclear weapons and missile defense programs, and acquisition of certain drones and munitions.

The idea of steep defense cuts, originally reported by Bloomberg last week, is certain to draw opposition from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where Republicans in recent weeks had been discussing major increases in defense spending in upcoming years – not significant cuts.

But Hegseth’s budget plans appear to follow broader instructions from President Donald Trump to reduce government spending, including the dismissal of thousands of federal workers in the last few weeks.

Total defense spending reached nearly $850 billion in fiscal 2024. The fiscal 2025 Defense Department budget has not yet been finalized, despite the new fiscal year starting last October.

The Washington Post reported the potential 8% cut as an annual reduction for five years. But in a memo sent out Wednesday evening, acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses said the goal was to find “offsets” in the fiscal 2026 budget plan, with a goal of finding at least $50 billion to transfer to “programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities.”

An 8% annual cut for the next five years would mean almost $300 billion less in military spending through fiscal 2030 compared to a stable budget figure. But most years, lawmakers approve increases in military spending at least equal to inflation, and often even higher than that.

“Through our budgets, the Department of Defense will once again resource warfighting and cease unnecessary spending that set our military back under the previous administration, including through so-called ‘climate change’ and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy,” Salesses wrote. “The time for preparation is over. We must act swiftly to deter current and impending threats and make the best use of taxpayers’ dollars in doing so.”

Defense Department officials did not provide a public copy of Hegseth’s memo to agency heads.

Earlier this year, Trump publicly suggested that all NATO countries spend at least 5% of their gross domestic product on defense, a figure that would mandate a nearly $1 trillion military budget for the United States.

Approving any defense cuts will fall to the Republican-led Congress, which began hearings on the fiscal 2026 military budget in the last few days. That process is expected to take most of the year.

Before that, lawmakers still need to reach agreement on a short-term or long-term budget extension for fiscal 2025 by the middle of March, or trigger a partial government shutdown.

Last month, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told Breaking Defense he hoped to boost defense spending by as much as $200 billion in coming years to deal with growing threats from China, Iran and other adversaries.