Senate Republicans aren’t happy with the Defense Department’s budget — and they’re making it known to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Our commander in chief deserves a military capable of maintaining deterrence and applying force when necessary to protect U.S. interests,” Sen. Roger Wicker said in his opening statement at a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing Wednesday. “I regret to say that this fiscal year 2026 budget request will not deliver that military.”
Hegseth has heard a barrage of complaints from both House and Senate lawmakers — and from both Democrats and Republicans — for a budget request that members of Congress say is woefully incomplete and lacking transparency.
“What we have in front of us is an inadequate budget request with precious little detail,” said Wicker, who chairs the committee.
The budget that arrived to the committee from the Office of Budget and Management would “maintain defense spending at $893 billion across the four years of this administration” — a far cry from the $1 trillion budget that both Hegseth and President Donald Trump have touted for months. Defense officials have sent draft budgets, many of which lack details beyond top-line totals.
Last week, both the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee and the House Armed Services Committee aired similar concerns.
On Wednesday, tensions rose between senators and Hegseth almost immediately. Wicker asked, “Do you commit to following congressional intent unequivocally on reconciliation?”
“Yes, our team looks forward to working with this committee both through the budget process and reconciliation, and would acknowledge this as a starting point of the conversation,” Hegseth responded.
That answer didn’t sit well with Wicker.
“Are you qualifying your explicit ‘Yes?’ Because we have not had that from any of the other witnesses that have come before us,” he said.
It took nearly an hour into the hearing for a Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton, to use their time to “commend” Hegseth. Cotton praised the department “for the redesignation of base names for Army bases” — the move Hegseth and Trump took to restore confederate-affiliated names of bases, though technically after different individuals in history who share names with confederate leaders.
But even Cotton has concerns. He asked General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to “address every potential choke point in our munitions supply chain,” something he’d already sent a letter to the Army about.
“I know they’re looking at it,” Caine said.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.