President Donald Trump’s announcement last week that he will ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget was fantastic news. The United States has long underinvested in its military needs given its global commitments and rising threats from Russia and China.
There’s just one problem, however: There’s no room for that kind of spending increase — $600 billion above the current figure — in the federal budget, which is running annual deficits of more than $1.7 trillion. So how can Congress answer Trump’s call? Much that was once unthinkable has happened during the Trump era. Could the most unthinkable thing of all — Washington Republicans embracing a tax increase — be next?
The numbers are inescapable. The tariff revenue that the president claims will pay for his defense buildup won’t come close to footing the bill. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump’s plan would add $5.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. His tariffs could cover only about 60 percent of that total. But that assumes the Supreme Court isn’t about to rule that the bulk of Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional.
We should know about that soon. But even if the tariff revenue survives in current or some constitutionally readjusted form, there’s another issue: The money already was offered up as an answer to the increased deficit spending in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which is projected to increase the debt by $4.1 trillion over a decade.
Trump seems to be able to break the laws of politics with impunity, but he cannot break the laws of mathematics. Roughly $3 trillion in tariff revenue cannot pay for $10 trillion in spending.
Of course, Republicans will want to turn first to spending cuts, and they would be right to do so. But there isn’t enough waste, fraud and abuse to cover so massive an amount. Even somehow recapturing 100 percent of fraud lurking in the system — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently estimated the problem at up to $600 billion annually — would not cover this massive gap.
Plus, the politics points toward a tax increase. Cutting spending so deeply would necessarily mean reducing or eliminating programs that many Trump voters rely on. GOP members of Congress won’t want to explain to their constituents why the money behind their health care, farm subsidies, disability assistance and other supports was repurposed for the military. The political winner isn’t guns before butter; it’s guns and butter.
That leaves Republican with three options. They can reject the president’s defense budget. They can pay for it with debt. Or they can pay for it with tax hikes.
The first course would be bad in two ways. First, the military needs the money. Most of our planes and ships are reaching the end of their useful lifespans, and current spending levels won’t replace them quickly enough. The United States also needs a larger military, especially the Navy, Air Force and Space Force, to meet China’s challenge. Continuing to play footsie with this reality increases the chance China will feel emboldened to invade Taiwan or somewhere else.
Second, it would be bad for the economy. A big increase in defense spending means an automatic resurgence in domestic manufacturing and the industries that service it. Tanks, planes and ships have to be built by Americans in America, and supplying this buildup will create jobs in transportation, construction and raw materials extraction. Republicans who talk a good game about being a blue-collar party can’t turn around and reject a chance to quickly make that talk reality.
Paying with debt has long been Washington’s favorite option, but even today’s Beltway denizens must recognize that this path is played out. America’s debt has already been downgraded by major ratings agencies. More large-scale borrowing would surely hasten further downgrades, raising the cost of borrowing and bringing a genuine fiscal calamity ever closer. Do Republicans want to be the ones who added the multi-trillion-dollar straw that broke the camel’s back?
So that leaves revenue hikes. Assuming the tariff revenue survives, funding the rest of the gap — $7 trillion — would require increasing taxes by about 2 percent of annual GDP. Congress could do that in a variety of ways. It can raise the premiums wealthy seniors pay for their Medicare Part B and D policies. It can cut back on a variety of tax expenditures that cost the government $2.2 trillion a year. It can even — gasp! — raise income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
The GOP will never raise taxes, you say? Surprise! Trump already did it. (Yes, tariffs are a tax.) All that’s left to do is be open about it. Because the alternative is a break in the party’s decades-long commitment to peace through strength — and that’s what should be unthinkable.
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