WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Mark Kelly criticized the Trump administration's $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget request at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing late last month, calling the proposal outrageous. Kelly, a member of the committee, said the request was disconnected from current needs.

The administration released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal last month as a starting point for negotiations with Congress over annual spending. The proposal would mark a 42% increase in defense spending from 2026 levels and includes a pay raise for troops, funding to resupply critical munitions, and money to build a space-based "Golden Dome" missile defense system.

"They need to submit a defense budget that makes sense for the moment we're in," Kelly said. "When I got to the Senate five and a half years ago, the defense budget was just over $700 billion. Now they're asking for twice as much money — it's nearly the amount that the rest of the world pays for its defense."

He also questioned the feasibility of the Golden Dome program and raised concerns about the state of the U.S. munitions stockpile during the war with Iran. "The physics on that stuff is really, really hard. I'm very confident we're going to spend a lot of money, we're going to get a system that doesn't work," he said. "I think it's fair to say it's shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines, because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline. Whether it's a conflict in the western Pacific with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted."

The White House is expected to ask Congress for a supplemental spending package to cover the cost of the war with Iran along with the budget request. The cost of the war with Iran was about $25 billion, a Pentagon official said at a congressional hearing late last month.