If he has to choose between guns and butter, President Trump has made it clear he wants the guns.

This is the right choice for our national security and reflects, as well, a correct assessment of what should be the federal government’s top priority — not funding social services, but providing for the common defense.

Trump’s new budget proposes a $1.5 trillion defense budget in fiscal year 2027, a staggering 40 percent year-over-year increase.

At the same time, it outlines a 10 percent cut in so-called domestic discretionary programs (a category excluding entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security).

Progressives consider this tantamount to a crime against humanity.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the budget “rotten to the core.” Senator Patty Murray of Washington said its vision is “bleak and unacceptable.” Her colleague from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, deemed the document “an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs, and less for the things people need.”

Well, people need a military to protect us from enemies who want to kill Americans and end U.S. geopolitical preeminence, bringing all manner of negative consequences for our economy and safety.

We are not exactly living in a time of reassuring stability. The U.S. is embroiled in a war in the Middle East that has rocked global energy markets, while Russia has repeatedly invaded a neighboring country to its west, and China could be on the cusp of precipitating the greatest major-power conflict since World War II.

This is not a time when — if one ever existed — the fate of the country depends on robust federal funding for, say, community development block grants.

Trump intuits as much. “The United States can’t take care of daycare,” he said last week. “That has to be up to a state. We’re fighting wars. Medicaid, Medicare — they can do it on a state basis. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

Fighting and deterring wars should indeed be the prime responsibility of the federal government, rather than sending federal dollars sluicing throughout the nation to fund priorities large and small, worthy and utterly ridiculous.

In characteristic fashion, the New York Times noted of Trump’s budget that some of “the most severe cuts would reduce or eliminate funding that benefits minority groups and their communities” and also remarked that the administration seeks “to scrap money designed to reduce racial disparities in health and those supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”

The mock headline writes itself: “Trump Seeks World-Class Military — Minorities and LGBTQ+ Community Hardest Hit.”

There is no doubt that the scale of Trump’s budget, which would be the biggest single-year increase in defense spending since the Korean War, is equal to the challenge that we face. Much depends, though, on what specifically the budget funds, and how effectively the money is eventually spent.

In broad gauge, the priorities are the right ones, reflecting a new age of high-tech warfare and our shortfalls in shipbuilding.

The Pentagon is requesting $11.36 billion for Air Force missile procurement in 2027, an enormous increase from $3.7 billion in 2026. The missile budget is projected to keep growing. In 2029, it would be $16 billion, an eightfold increase from 2021.

Space Force would get a 77 percent increase.

As for the Navy, it wants roughly $65 billion for building ships, more than doubling the $27.2 billion from 2026.

In terms of bang for the buck, the administration has begun to fund more nimble, tech-driven defense firms while it pushes the traditional big players like Boeing and Lockheed to become faster and more efficient.

As a practical matter, the president is unlikely to get all the defense spending that he wants from Congress, which, when confronted with a choice between guns and butter, always chooses both.

But Trump is right to go big and to focus on the federal spending that could win or lose a war and determine our fate as a great power.

© 2026 by King Features Syndicate