Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was repeatedly asked the same question about his department’s budget request this week on the Hill: Where are the details?
Hegseth testified Wednesday in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration with the level of information coming out of his department.
“The department has been unacceptably slow in providing us with the account-level information that we need to draft the defense appropriations bill,” Sen. Susan Collins told Hegseth, echoing a critique her Democratic colleague Sen. Chris Coons lodged earlier.
For weeks, House and Senate lawmakers have been looking for the Pentagon to provide more information about its budget request. The Department of Defense has released nothing publicly on the budget. Instead, officials have sent multiple draft budgets, some of which only include large top-line totals that lack detail on ship building, drone investment, facilities updates and other programs the administration has said are critical.
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Without those numbers, the committees can’t actually write a bill to pass the budget — a reality that’s frustrated lawmakers.
“We are still waiting for real budget details. This is officially the latest budget submission of the modern era,” Coons said. “This committee, to do its job, wants to work with you on the details.”
Hegseth spoke on Tuesday to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where lawmakers also pressed him on those details. Meanwhile, the reconciliation bill pushes total Pentagon funding to near $1 trillion, something Hegseth and President Donald Trump have consistently claimed credit for.
But on Wednesday, senators demanded Hegseth clarify what the department actually wants. According to the committee, the baseline department budget is actually $18.8 billion less than last year’s, with the reconciliation bill covering the gap.
“The administration, unwisely, is relying on reconciliation to fund a second Virginia-class submarine and two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers,” Collins said, highlighting a key administration promise for rebuilding the Navy. “Reconciliation, Mr. Secretary, was meant to provide one-time supplemental funds to augment the defense budget, not to supplant the investments that should be in the base budget.”
Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Hegseth about the price of retrofitting the new Air Force One, another major budget item. The cost “cannot be revealed in this setting,” Hegseth said.
But Reed pressed.
“Why can’t it be revealed in this setting? We are the Appropriations Committee of the United States Senate,” Reed said. “We appropriate the money that you will spend after it’s authorized by my committee, and you cannot tell us how much the contract is worth?”
Hegseth, for his part, sounded undeterred by the frustration on Capitol Hill. The defense secretary talked over senators on both sides of the aisle, including the chairman of the committee, and engaged in heated exchanges with senators.
It wasn’t just the budget that ignited tension in the room. Ukraine and the outsized federal response to protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles were also hot-button issues. Again, senators from both parties demanded transparency in the administration’s positions.
Among the heated moments was a back-and-forth with Sen. Mitch McConnell, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, who has been a critic of Hegseth’s.
McConnell asked Hegseth who he thinks is the aggressor in the war in Ukraine, following up to say the administration appears to be giving Russia room to define the terms of the end of the war.
“I’m sure we agree on it, we don’t want a headline at the end of this conflict that says ‘Russia Wins, America Loses,’” McConnell said.
“I would say, given the approach of President Trump, that’s not the headline, regardless,” Hegseth responded.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the most outspoken supporters of Hegseth and Trump, picked up the subject too, comparing the conflict in Ukraine to “underestimating” the Nazis in World War II.
“The danger of that is that like 50 million people get killed, so let’s not do that now,” Graham said. “Russia will dismember Ukraine and keep going if we don’t stop them.”
Democrats also seized on the opportunity to highlight Hegseth’s role in the deployment of National Guard forces and the mobilization of active duty Marines to Los Angeles.
Reed called the deployment “illegal” and counter to military readiness. Sen. Brian Schatz asked what the scope of the orders actually were and if they could be used to mobilize troops anywhere.
“It does not specify which Marines or which Guard,” Schatz said of the order. “I’m trying to figure out if you decided to do this collectively in Kansas or any other place, would you need to specify a new sort of fact pattern, or do you think this order applies to any guard anywhere, any service branch anywhere?”
Every member of the committee came with a major concern for Hegseth. Whether it was facilities concerns — Sen. Jerry Moran was worried about hiring new personnel to manage Army Corps of Engineers-owned lakes in his state — worries about Navy shipbuilding by both Collins and Sen. Patty Murray, or the bipartisan push for support to Ukraine, the hearing wasn’t a walk in the park for Hegseth.
But in most cases, Hegseth pushed back.
This week’s hearings showed areas of serious disagreement between where Hegseth sees the budget and what lawmakers are prioritizing. On Tuesday, Rep. Tom Cole, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, seemed to get the brush-off as well.
Cole asked about an air platform that flies and is maintained out of his district, which he called his “parochial, but I think legitimate interest.” Hegseth wasn’t interested.
“I think President Trump has charged us with making the big, difficult decisions — after a lot of deferred maintenance and deferred decisions — to ignore parochial priorities in large part and focus on what the department needs,” he told Cole.
Cole told NOTUS later Tuesday that while he has “great respect for the secretary” and that “he is empowered to make a lot of decisions,” there is something he needs to keep in mind.
“We make the final decision on those sorts of things, with all due respect to the secretary,” Cole said.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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