Senator Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., used a Thursday afternoon post on X to renew his campaign against the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request, arguing the figure has ballooned to the point that it now nearly rivals what the rest of the planet spends on its militaries combined.
Kelly, a 25-year Navy combat veteran, former Navy test pilot and retired NASA astronaut who now sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, published the post at 1:03 p.m. on July 23, 2026. The full statement read: “As a veteran, I’ll always support a strong military. But uncontrolled spending won’t lead to better results. Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget is approaching the combined defense spending of every other country on Earth. That is out of control.”
A Budget Request Unlike Any Since World War II
The number Kelly is referring to comes from the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, submitted to Congress on April 3, 2026. The request calls for $1.5 trillion combined across the discretionary base budget and reconciliation funding, which analysts have described as the highest level of defense funding in a single fiscal year since World War II. Of that total, $1.15 trillion is discretionary funding that must move through the regular appropriations process, while an additional $350 billion is designated for the reconciliation process — the same fast-track mechanism Republicans used to push through a $150 billion defense supplemental in 2025. Independent trackers have put the year-over-year jump at somewhere between 42 and 44 percent depending on the baseline used.
Kelly’s comparison to the rest of the world is not a new talking point for him. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this year, he laid out the math directly to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “I took a look recently and it seems that the defense budget of the rest of the world; I’m talking China, Russia, India, every Asian country, every European country, South America. Everybody else is in the neighborhood, it looked like $1.7 [trillion] to $1.8 [trillion]. So, your request is approaching all defense spending from everybody else, with the exception of us. That is a huge amount of money.”
“It Seems Like That Number Was Just Kind Of Pulled Out Of Thin Air”
That same SASC hearing produced one of Kelly’s sharpest lines of the year on the topic. Pressing Hegseth directly on how the Pentagon arrived at its topline figure, Kelly said: “Mr. Secretary, so $1.5 trillion. 1.5 [trillion] is a very round number. If you’re putting together a budget, you’d come up with, ‘these are the problems we’re trying to solve. This is the capability we need. These are the systems we have to buy.’ And at the end of the day, it would spit out a number. And it’s probably not $1.5 trillion. So, to me, it feels like that number was just kind of pulled out of thin air.”
Hegseth pushed back on the characterization in the same hearing, telling Kelly the exact figure was $1.535 trillion and that it “was a product of a highly rigorous process throughout our department, from COCOMM commanders to the services, with our comptroller, with our deputy Secretary, with the Chairman.” Kelly also used the hearing to question specific line items, including the Golden Dome missile defense shield, telling Hegseth: “There’s stuff in there, like the Golden Dome, the physics on that stuff is really, really hard. I’m very confident we’re going to spend a lot of money, and we’re going to get a system that doesn’t work.”
Clashing With Hegseth Over A Classified Briefing
The exchanges between Kelly and the Pentagon have not stayed confined to committee rooms. After Kelly discussed elements of the budget request in a nationally televised CBS interview, Hegseth responded on social media that Kelly was “blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a CLASSIFIED Pentagon briefing he received,” and added that the Defense Department’s legal counsel would examine whether the senator had “violated his oath.” Kelly had appeared on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that Sunday and called the $1.5 trillion request “outrageous.”
From “Outrageous” To “Out Of Control”
Kelly’s language on the CBS broadcast tracks closely with what he posted Thursday. On air, he told Brennan: “There were other things that we could do. The $1.5 trillion request from this administration. It’s outrageous. When I got to the Senate five and a half years ago, the defense budget was just over $700 billion.” He continued: “Now, they’re asking for twice as much money. It’s nearly the amount that the rest of the world pays for its defense.” Kelly closed the exchange by arguing “they need to submit a defense budget that makes sense for the moment we’re in.”2
Kelly struck a similar note the previous month on X, tying the spending fight directly to affordability for American families. In a June 9 post, he wrote that Trump “promised to lower costs” but “instead, he’s pushing a $1.5 trillion military budget — a huge increase,” and proposed redirecting money instead: “Here’s an idea: How about we cut that number and put money toward lowering bills for families and actually making people’s lives better. That’s what I’ll be fighting for this week.”
Voting No On The Defense Authorization Bill
Kelly translated that rhetoric into a formal vote two days later. On June 11, 2026, he voted against the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act in committee, releasing a statement that connected the spending fight to the ongoing U.S. military operation against Iran. “My vote against this year’s defense authorization came down to priorities. While families in Arizona and across the country are struggling to afford groceries, housing, health care, and other basic necessities, this administration is asking taxpayers to spend more than $1 trillion without a clear strategy or explanation of how it makes Americans safer,” Kelly said, adding that “more money is not a strategy, and taxpayers deserve transparency and accountability for every dollar Congress spends.” He went further, linking the spending request to the war footing itself: “We’re already seeing the consequences of that kind of thinking with Donald Trump’s war in Iran. After promising to keep America out of another war, Donald Trump launched a military operation without clearly explaining the mission, the end goal, or what comes next.”
Kelly has also pressed the administration on the operational costs of that Iran campaign specifically, telling Hegseth in committee: “The questions we should be asking and answering are: What does this cost us and what does it achieve for the American people? Many of these strikes use our best weapons, and we’re using a lot of them, and a lot of interceptors. We can’t make these munitions overnight and it’s clear from your budget requests that you know that.”
Where The Money Actually Goes
The scale of the request is not in dispute even among defense analysts sympathetic to higher spending. The fiscal 2026 budget had totaled roughly $1 trillion through a combination of $838.7 billion in the defense appropriations act and an additional $150 billion passed through reconciliation, while the 2027 request seeks $1.1 trillion in base discretionary budget authority for the Pentagon plus another $350 billion through reconciliation. Within that total, the Navy is slated to receive the biggest investment, the Air Force and Space Force are allocated $101.2 billion including funding for Golden Dome and the F-47 fighter program, and the Army receives $60.5 billion.
Kelly has not opposed every element of that buildout. In the same SASC hearing where he challenged the topline number, he told Hegseth: “I have always been supportive of defense spending in my entire time here. And after 25 years in the Navy, I want to make sure our folks have what they need.” He specifically cited support for the F-47 fighter and B-21 bomber programs while questioning whether other investments were duplicative or unnecessary, a distinction that runs through his Thursday post as well — he frames the objection as one of control and accountability, not opposition to military funding itself.
Where The Fight Stands Now
As of this month, Congress has not finished writing next year’s defense bills. A Congressional Research Service report dated July 7, 2026, noted that Congress has not passed an FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, and the House Appropriations Committee has separately proposed providing about $3.2 billion less in discretionary funding than the Pentagon requested for selected weapon systems. The House Armed Services Committee reported its version of the NDAA on June 15, 2026, and the Senate Armed Services Committee reported its own version the same day. The two chambers still need to reconcile their bills before either goes to the president’s desk, and the separate appropriations process that actually funds the government is running on a parallel, unfinished track.
Kelly’s criticism has not gone unanswered outside the Pentagon either. Republican commentators and some social media users have accused him of selective outrage, noting that he did not raise similar objections to defense spending levels under the Biden administration. That backlash has not appeared to change Kelly’s public posture; his Thursday post repeats, nearly word for word, the framing he has used in committee hearings, on national television, and in prior social media posts since at least May.
For now, the $1.5 trillion figure remains a request rather than a finished law, leaving room for the kind of fight Kelly is waging in public as lawmakers in both chambers continue marking up the FY2027 defense authorization and appropriations bills through the rest of the summer.