Trump pursues $1.5 trillion defense budget as debt service climbs
In the Aug. 13 WSJ Politics newsletter, Washington coverage chief Damian Paletta reported that both major parties are advancing new spending programs while neither campaigns on cutting existing ones. The newsletter cited Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, who is running on Medicare for All; James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, who wants to hire more teachers and expand access to early-childhood education; and President Trump’s push for a $1.5 trillion military budget.
“Members of both parties” have found “campaigning on cutting stuff” to be “not popular,” Paletta wrote.
The newsletter cited Congressional Budget Office projections of a 2026 federal deficit of $1.887 trillion set to exceed $2 trillion in 2027. Total government debt is “barreling toward $40 trillion,” the WSJ reported, with annual interest payments on the debt poised to total $1.1 trillion this year.
“The gravitational forces in Washington pull toward tax cuts and spending increases,” Paletta wrote, and any proposal moving in the opposite direction “must defy the odds.” Proposed offsets to new programs — Democratic calls for higher taxes or Republican calls to cut other programs — “rarely happens,” he wrote.
“What’s remarkable about this election,” the newsletter reported, “is how spending cuts initially were such a centerpiece of Trump’s agenda.” The Department of Government Efficiency, once central to the administration’s fiscal approach, has receded from the campaign conversation, a shift Paletta captured in shorthand as “RIP DOGE.”
The newsletter also touched on other items in the Aug. 13 edition. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping down at the end of the month. In Wisconsin, moderate Democrat David Crowley won the party’s gubernatorial primary, a result the newsletter described as “halting the progressive momentum” following recent Democratic Socialist gains in deep-blue pockets of the country.
On the Strait of Hormuz, the newsletter reported that President Trump has said the U.S. has “total control” of the waterway, while Iran’s military forces retain the ability to “choke traffic with relatively little military force — a handful of drone and missile attacks.” The U.S. Navy has guided tankers through the strait, the newsletter added, “but it’s an effort around the margins.”
The newsletter, citing officials who had seen or been briefed on the intelligence, reported that U.S. and Israeli intelligence had uncovered a plot by Iranian proxies to launch a lightweight, shoulder-fired missile at Trump’s plane as he departed Turkey. In the alleged scenario, a militant would evade security at the NATO summit and, from roughly half a mile away, use a man-portable air-defense system to target the aircraft, according to the officials.
The newsletter carried a correction: an Aug. 12 edition had reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backed Democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s Wisconsin primary bid. Ocasio-Cortez declined to endorse Hong.