Rolling Analysis

The President’s FY2026 Budget

Budget & Tax, Budget Process, | Analysis

May 23, 2025 | Print Article

TCS President Steve Ellis Statement on the Partial Release of the FY2026 Budget

The Trump Administration’s piecemeal and opaque rollout of the President’s FY2026 budget request reflects a disregard for both transparency and the congressional budget process.

As is common in a first term, the Office of Management and Budget released a barebones “Skinny Budget” earlier this year—just a few pages of summary tables. Then last week, officials indicated the full budget wouldn’t be submitted until after Congress completed work on the FY2025 budget reconciliation package, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

So instead of releasing the full request as a single coherent document, the administration quietly posted the FY2026 Budget Appendix and a scattershot of agency materials late Friday afternoon. Some agencies, like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, have posted budget justifications—but at just 194 pages, CMS’s FY2026 document is nearly 40% shorter than last year’s. USDA released its main justification, but key components like the Forest Service are missing. The Pentagon—the largest recipient of discretionary funding—has offered neither justification documents nor a complete funding breakdown.

And what’s absent is just as troubling as what’s been released. The documents so far focus only on the discretionary budget. There are no revenue proposals, no economic projections, and no information on mandatory spending programs like Social Security and Medicare. In other words, none of the numbers that would actually put the budget in context.

This incomplete release seems designed to shield key proposals from public scrutiny until after reconciliation negotiations conclude. Taxpayers deserve a full, timely, and transparent budget—not a political strategy disguised as fiscal policy.