For immediate release: May 2, 2025

Albuquerque, NM -- Today, White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought released an outline of the Trump Administration's funding request for discretionary programs in fiscal year 2026 (FY26). A detailed request with program details is expected to follow mid-month.

The Administration's budget priorities are very different, to say the least, than those enacted in recent years. 

In this request, "base" (non-emergency) discretionary non-defense budget lines would see an aggregate 22.6% cut in FY26, while national security budget lines would increase by 13.4% overall (p. 43).

Rather than relying exclusively on the ordinary appropriations process, which requires 60 votes in the Senate to overcome filibusters, the Administration and its congressional allies are attempting to use the budget reconciliation process to provide additional resources to national security programs specifically, given their narrow majorities in the House and Senate. Today's budget request is a complementary part of the Trump plan to substantially change federal priorities.

If the budget reconciliation process is successful, national security funding levels are likely to exceed a trillion dollars for the first time next year. (p. 43).

One measure of the new priorities is the fraction of (base, non-emergency) discretionary spending to be devoted to national security functions. The Administration seeks to increase the national security fraction of discretionary spending from the current 55% to 63% next year, while decreasing overall discretionary spending by $140 billion (7.6%).

Among the many changes proposed (which are enumerated in today's memo), the Administration is proposing the largest year-on-year increase in nuclear warhead spending since 1962, 

By way of background, nuclear warheads are designed and built by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a subsidiary of the Department of Energy (DOE). Nearly all of NNSA's work is performed by contractors. This work is funded in the NNSA "Weapons Activities" (WA) budget line.

For FY25, NNSA was appropriated $19.293 billion (B) for its warhead work in the final FY25 continuing resolution (Public Law 119-4, p. 17). WA is the largest part (80%) of NNSA's overall funding level of $24.0 B (p. 44).

Today's budget proposal would augment NNSA's proposed discretionary funding for FY26 with "$6 billion" in reconciliation resources to bring the FY26 total to $30.0 billion, a 25% increase (p. 44 and footnote 5, p 46). 

All or nearly all of this increase would be in Weapons Activities.

The U.S. has not seen a 25% increase in nuclear warhead design, testing, and production since the 37% increase in 1962 (Study Group files; graph).

This past Tuesday (4/29/25), the House Armed Services Committee passed its portion of the proposed omnibus budget reconciliation bill, which included $3.24 B in additional funds for various NNSA warhead activities. These funds would become available as soon as the resulting law is signed, which could be during the current fiscal year. 

The reconciliation process is far from complete however, and faces tremendous political difficulties, which must be surmounted in a very few weeks.

The reconciliation resources referred to in today's budget request are not actually part of Congress's discretionary budget process. If and when they become available, they are part of the federal government's mandatory spending. As OMB's Vought said today in his cover letter, 

Under the proposal, a portion of these increases - at least $325 billion assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed to by the Congress - would be provided through reconciliation, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources needed to complete the mission. This mandatory supplement to discretionary spending would enable the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among others, to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration and harden the border and other defenses to protect America from foreign invasion. Providing these resources through reconciliation ensures that the money is available when needed, and not held hostage by Democrats to force wasteful non-defense discretionary spending increases as was the case in the President's first term.

NNSA Weapons Activities also has access to significant emergency funding, which it obtained just before Christmas in the waning days of the last Administration. The Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (Public Law 118-158, p.23), provided an additional $1.884 B to Weapons Activities, "to remain available until expended." These funds -- at the time, a 10% plus-up to WA -- are not tallied in today's budget workup because they are not discretionary funds.

There is more. NNSA is not an ordinary federal agency, and the story of NNSA's budget would not be complete without mentioning that NNSA, and its various Weapons Activities programs, actually have far more resources than even this. 

According to USAspending.gov, NNSA Weapons Activities has, right now, "budgetary resources" of $32.5 B, far exceeding the $19.3 B in the current year's discretionary appropriation or the $21.2 B that would result from adding in the "emergency" $1.9 B appropriation late last year.

Why? Almost uniquely among federal agencies, NNSA does not have to return unspent balances to the Treasury. They remain "available until expended," and they accumulate. Especially during covid, it was difficult to spend all the money Congress was providing. As far as we can discern, NNSA Weapons Activities currently has access to about $13.3 B in its "piggy-bank" of un-expired, so-called "zero-year" appropriations.

For brevity's sake, in this press release we do not examine the significant additional nuclear weapons investments in the DoD portion of the bicameral proposed draft reconciliation bill.

Study Group director Greg Mello:

"In his first administration, Trump was manipulated by the NNSA Administrator and a small group in DoD into asking for far more NNSA funding than OMB or the Secretary of Energy wanted. Trump eventually fired the Administrator, who reportedly had been placed under surveillance for months as a result of that caper. But it was too late by then. The money was in the pipeline.

"Now, NNSA and congressional hawks want vastly more money for nuclear weapons than ever before, and Trump is apparently more than ready to provide it. OMB badly needs to recalibrate its direction. NNSA already has more money than it can spend. 

"At NNSA, money is not limiting. Trained, motivated people are limiting, as are facilities. But ultimately it's about people. Can the nuclear weapons enterprise lure enough people away from productive work to make weapons of mass destruction, in the present situation?

"The people won't come in sufficient numbers, or quality, and they won't stay if the work is stupid. And it is. 

"Too many nuclear hawks think they can command long-term devotion to nuclear weapons careers with money. That only works to a degree, when society and infrastructure all around us are eroding for lack of care. Money isn't enough, and people are less and less willing to be bullshitted by Orwellian slogans.

"Trump is never going to 'make nuclear weapons great again,' or preside over a 'once in a generation' military renewal. Get real. Let us pray with our bodies and minds that some small ray of light will make it through the Stygian blackness enveloping Washington, DC, just long enough for a few people to see the stars and get their bearings again."

***ENDS***