As the weather in the nation’s capital starts warming up, so is the federal budget season. But like DC’s weather this spring, full of wild temperature swings and pressure changes, this budget season’s shaping up to be anything but normal. The abnormalities are emanating first and foremost from the Pentagon, which is seeking a preposterous $1.5 trillion budget.

In this Weekly Wastebasket, we’re bringing you the latest temperature readings on the Pentagon’s budget request, the deluge of questions from lawmakers during recent budget hearings, and our long-term forecast. And like any meteorologist worth their salt, you can imagine us gesticulating wildly at a map of the United States as we explain it.

To understand the enormity of this Pentagon budget request, we have to put it in context. Adjusted for inflation, Pentagon spending grew by about 50 percent over the first quarter of this century, from 2000 to 2024. Then last year, it grew by 18 percent. Funding this budget request would mean an additional 45 percent increase. Even adjusted for inflation, this is the largest U.S. military budget request ever, larger than at the height of World War II. And if the Pentagon gets an Iran War supplemental as well, the total figure could see military spending effectively double in just two years.

To reach this big number, budget writers are creatively pursuing two numbers. The Pentagon is seeking $1.15 trillion in its annual spending bill for its base budget, and $350 billion through yet another budget reconciliation bill. That means different votes on different bills, and that’s left us budget nerds wondering how lawmakers will vote on each. The jury’s still out on that question, but our barometer shows some encouraging signs that many lawmakers won’t stand for either number.

On the $350 billion side of the request, Republicans would need almost unanimous support from their side of the aisle to pass it, as no Democrats are expected to vote for it (the minority party typically rejects reconciliation packages). That’s far from a sure thing, with many Republican lawmakers wary of cutting deeper into social programs to pay for another Pentagon spending spree against the backdrop of a painful affordability crisis, a deeply unpopular war with Iran, and upcoming midterm elections.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle also took the opportunity of budget hearings to hammer the reconciliation request for its many process shortcomings. Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House Ken Calvert (R-CA) took time in his opening remarks to voice his “serious concerns about how the bifurcated budget splits discretionary and mandatory funding on some of our highest priority programs. We had significant gaps in needs for our warfighters that we had to address in the FY26 appropriations process because of the way mandatory was requested and enacted.” Similarly, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), the ranking member of the subcommittee, said the first round of reconciliation “created broken glass, funding holes for vital programs that the appropriators had to fix.”

We highlighted these funding holes in our report and database on congressional increases to the Pentagon budget earlier this year, where we identified $3.4 billion spread across 10 procurement and research increases labeled “reconciliation funding incongruence” in the final FY2026 budget. Beyond these shortfalls, reconciliation poses an array of other oversight challenges that should lead lawmakers to question the wisdom of another round. Then there’s the minor detail that the Pentagon has only spent $26 billion of the $156 billion enacted through this Congress’ first round of reconciliation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s testimony in a recent budget hearing, raising questions about why they want an even bigger slush fund this year.

On the $1.15 trillion side of the request, while leadership in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have said they plan to mark the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual Pentagon policy bill, to $1.15 trillion in line with the Pentagon’s base request, the minority members on those committees have mostly kept their powder dry on that number, while focusing their ire instead on the $1.5 trillion figure.

But that’s starting to shift. In recent comments to POLITICO Pro, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (who also sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee), suggested that the NDAA may not receive its usual amount of bipartisan support given the high-water mark to $1.15 trillion, saying “I think now we’re in the era of it’s just such a large amount of money. And then you can’t forget that it’s being paid for by cuts to social programs.” And we’re getting the sense that a number of lawmakers who normally vote for the NDAA may not, if efforts to lower the topline fall short.

Some appropriators in the minority, meanwhile, have explicitly signaled their opposition to the $1.15 trillion side of the request, where they have jurisdiction (the armed services committees have jurisdiction over Pentagon spending during reconciliation). Rep. McCollum blasted the number when the budget first dropped in early April as “outrageous and unacceptable, especially when President Trump and Congressional Republicans intend to make further cuts to critical services that Americans rely on at home.”

While most other appropriators have stayed focused on the $1.5 trillion topline so far, their testimony in the appropriations committee hearings could help lay the groundwork for opposition to the base budget increase as votes on the budget draw nearer. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, explicitly called the topline “unacceptable” and expressed hope that Republicans will join Democrats in rejecting the “absurd” request.

That hope could prove warranted. Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) predicted in a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the budget late last month that “we’re going to lose some Republican votes on the plus-up.”

As more lawmakers speak out against the topline, external pressure is building on those who have been more circumspect to clarify their position, and we’re here for it. We pointed out the bifurcated spending plan is really a negotiating tactic: “It’s all about trying to make a $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget seem reasonable in comparison. But there’s nothing reasonable about it. It’s a roughly $150 billion increase over last year. If they can’t defend the nation with a trillion dollars, they’re doing it wrong.”

We’ll be tracking the Pentagon budget like a storm chaser tracking a tornado as it tears through the budget process, so keep a weather eye on the horizon for our latest National Security forecasts.