Trump's $1.5T defense budget eliminates LIHEAP, slashes EPA 52%

President Trump released his FY2027 budget request on April 3, 2026, proposing $1.5 trillion in total defense spending. The figure combines a $1.15 trillion base Pentagon budget with $350 billion in additional defense spending the White House plans to move through a budget reconciliation bill. At $1.15 trillion, the base defense budget would be the first ever to exceed $1 trillion, making it the largest in American history.

Office of Management and Budget Director RVRussell Vought authored the proposal, framing the buildup as restoring American military dominance against China, Russia, and Iran. The budget includes a 5-7% pay raise for active-duty military personnel and allocates $19 billion for domestic law enforcement — a 15% increase. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's Pentagon would receive funds for new missile systems, additional destroyers and submarines, and expanded munitions production.

Trump's budget designates $17.5 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, modeled on Israel's Iron Dome and designed to protect the continental United States from ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. Only $400 million of that comes from the base Pentagon budget — the remaining $17.1 billion depends entirely on Congress passing a separate reconciliation package.

Golden Dome already received a $23 billion down payment through a 2025 reconciliation bill. The administration's continued reliance on reconciliation for major defense projects creates a structural dependency on near-unanimous Republican support, since reconciliation requires 51 Senate votes and nearly every House Republican to vote yes given the party's thin majority. Speaker Mike Johnson has committed to moving the reconciliation bill before Trump's June 1 deadline.

The budget cuts non-defense discretionary spending by $73 billion — roughly 10% from FY2026 enacted levels. The Environmental Protection Agency faces a 52.4% cut, bringing its discretionary budget to $4.2 billion — the lowest funding level since the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. EPA Administrator LZLee Zeldin's agency would lose environmental justice grants, climate research programs, and the modeling and research divisions that generate the scientific analysis underlying air and water regulations.

The Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of more than 650 former EPA career officials and political appointees from administrations of both parties, warned that a 52% cut would gut the agency's capacity to conduct inspections, pursue enforcement actions, and oversee cleanup of more than 1,300 contaminated Superfund sites. The EPA employs roughly 15,000 workers nationally. The budget also eliminates the agency's environmental justice program, which directs enforcement toward lower-income communities disproportionately exposed to industrial pollutants.

The National Science Foundation faces a 54.7% cut under the proposal, dropping from $8.8 billion to $4 billion. NSF funds basic research at universities and national laboratories, covering computing, engineering, materials science, mathematics, and environmental science. NSF grants are the primary funding source for tens of thousands of graduate student fellowships and postdoctoral positions at American universities.

The National Institutes of Health would lose approximately $5 billion, continuing a multi-year push to reduce the federal biomedical research budget. NIH funds clinical trials, Alzheimer's and cancer research, and infectious disease programs that private industry does not reliably fund at scale. The Small Business Administration faces a 67.2% cut, eliminating loan and technical assistance programs for rural entrepreneurs and households recovering from natural disasters.

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps approximately 6 million low-income households pay heating and cooling bills, is eliminated entirely at a cost of $4 billion annually. Community Development Block Grants, which fund housing rehabilitation, infrastructure improvements, and economic development in thousands of cities, are also zeroed out at $775 million per year.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development faces a 44% cut on top of funding freezes federal courts have already blocked. The budget proposes eliminating the HUD Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program and Title X family planning grants. The National Low Income Housing Coalition warned the combined cuts would accelerate homelessness in cities already struggling with shelter capacity.

The Department of Education faces a $2.3 billion cut, with the administration continuing its push to eliminate the department entirely — a goal Congress has rejected in every prior budget cycle. Several K-12 grant programs and student aid initiatives are targeted for elimination or transfer to states, though the budget preserves Pell Grants and Title I funding for low-income school districts.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees agencies facing significant cuts, including NIH and the Office of Head Start, a preschool program serving approximately 800,000 low-income children annually. Kennedy has focused his tenure on food safety and pharmaceutical regulation reform while the administration cuts traditional public health infrastructure across his department.

OMB Director RVRussell Vought drew significant criticism for releasing a budget document that omitted the projected $2.2 trillion federal deficit for FY2027. When testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Vought said he didn't include the deficit figure because he didn't want to 'confuse the country.' Budget analysts from across the political spectrum called the omission historically unprecedented.

The FY2027 deficit of $2.2 trillion would be $400 billion higher than the FY2025 deficit. The omission drew direct challenges from Republican appropriators who noted the reconciliation bill the administration is counting on would add additional debt. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called the omission 'a troubling departure from decades of bipartisan budget transparency.'

The president's budget is a proposal, not law. Congress controls federal spending through the appropriations process under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. Lawmakers routinely pass spending bills that differ substantially from what the White House requests — in FY2026, Congress rejected Trump's proposed deep domestic cuts and passed funding levels near prior-year baselines for most agencies.

RWRobert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, called the proposal 'a moral obscenity' — a budget that pairs a record $1.5 trillion defense request with the elimination of heating assistance for 6 million low-income households. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) signaled bipartisan resistance: 'These are proven programs that I strongly support,' she said of LIHEAP and biomedical research funding. Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) said Trump was 'proposing to eliminate programs that help families afford the basics — like LIHEAP.' Republican appropriators in both chambers face the challenge of reconciling the White House wish list with Senate rules requiring 60 votes to pass most spending bills. The $350 billion reconciliation package represents the portion most likely to advance without Democratic support, but requires near-unanimous Republican votes that party leaders had not secured as of the budget's release.