McConnell Warns Trump Admin Defense Budget Will Put ‘Key Priorities at Unnecessary Risk’

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was highly critical of the defense budget request by President Donald Trump’s administration Tuesday, shredding it during a committee hearing as putting “key priorities at unnecessary risk” of “major disruptions.”

The 84-year-old senior senator from Kentucky is retiring, having announced in February 2025 that he would not be running for re-election. He has served in the Senate since 1985 and spent years as both Senate Majority and Minority Leader as the Republicans’ electoral fortunes waxed and waned. McConnell previously stepped down from his party leadership role in 2024 and was replaced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD).

At Tuesday’s hearing for the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to review the Trump administration’s budget request for the Air Force and Space Force (which was established as part of the Air Force), McConnell delivered opening remarks before Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, and Space Force Chief of Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman testified about budgetary needs and plans.

After speaking briefly to acknowledge the “devotion and sacrifice” of U.S. service members, McConnell, who chairs the subcommittee, dug into the specifics of the administration’s budget, warning that the “structure” of this request “would put consistent funding for key priorities at unnecessary risk.”

A main reason for McConnell’s criticism was his assessment that there were “core pieces of the president’s defense agenda” that were “requested as one-off reconciliation spending, not full-year base appropriations,” including “multi-year procurement contracts for critical munitions, half of the F-35 program, Golden Dome, and drone dominance initiatives.”

“This is especially mystifying for multiyear procurement contracts,” he explained. “I mean, the need to budget for them annually is right there in the name.”

“The Administration’s choice to structure an ambitious $1.5 trillion dollar request in this way is yet another missed opportunity to put key aspects of our common defense on a stronger and more enduring fiscal footing,” McConnell added, arguing that the problem was bigger than just semantics, but was “a recipe for major disruptions in the very possible event that party-line reconciliation fails.”

He further warned that the Pentagon “will continue to step on its own tail if it insists in housing procurement of new airframes [for the F-35] primarily in one-off reconciliation spending,” calling the F-35 key to “operational readiness” for both the U.S. and our “key allies.” Therefore, McConnell said, “there’s really no excuse for not placing it squarely in full-year appropriations.”

McConnell then addressed the officers who would be testifying at the hearing, saying he hoped to hear from them about “longer-term scaling” regarding the “procurement of key systems.”

“At a fundamental level,” McConnell said, “I’m curious to hear from each of you about how the Department of the Air Force is applying the lessons of the modern battlefield. I’m concerned that the Pentagon as a whole is not learning quickly enough from the battlefields in Ukraine and the Gulf. And failure to learn and adapt, particularly when it comes to force protection and counter-drone technology, has real and measurable costs.”

He wrapped his opening remarks by commenting that there was “clearly a need for supplemental funds to cover critical operational costs” incurred in Trump’s Iran war in order to “recapture readiness, and to make serious down payments against the munitions shortfalls that long predate operations against Iran.”

Watch the video above via C-SPAN (McConnell is the first speaker in the hearing). A full transcript of McConnell’s remarks is posted on his Senate website.

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