Gold is for War: Trump’s Budget Director Hails $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget as a Sign “Fiscal Ship…in the right direction.”

The 2027 budget request did not grapple with the most expensive part of ​mandatory federal spending – Social Security retirement and Medicare health spending for senior citizens – where suggesting cuts is considered politically perilous.

If enacted, total federal spending would reach $2.2 trillion in 2027, compared with the roughly $1.8 trillion spent for the current fiscal year.

DEFENSE COSTS

The military request ​will please defense hawks on Capitol Hill, but also highlights how Trump is trying to pay for doubling down on military pursuits, even after Republicans boosted defense spending last year in party-line legislation.

The Pentagon already requested $200 billion in extra funding to pay for the Iran war, but the White House has not yet officially made that request to Congress, where it is also likely to face scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties.

Other specific funding increases proposed by Trump include his controversial Golden Dome missile defense shield, money to build up critical mineral supplies for the defense industry and $65.8 billion to build ​34 new combat and support ships.

Funds for shipbuilding, a priority for Trump since his first term, include initial funding for the so-called Trump-class battleship as well as submarines.

“Fiscal futility is ending,” White House budget director Russell Vought said in a letter to Congress, adding, “Our ​fiscal ship has turned to face in the right direction.”

MESSAGING IN A MIDTERM YEAR

The president’s budget also reflects the administration’s political priorities ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November, when Trump’s Republicans hope to maintain their small majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House ‌of Representatives.

Lawmakers on Capitol ⁠Hill often treat White House budget requests as suggestive, as appropriators try to negotiate behind the scenes to maintain their own legislative priorities.

Top congressional Democrats said Trump’s defense-heavy proposal was “dead on arrival.”

“It’s just an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs, and less for the things people need, like housing, healthcare, education, roads, scientific research, and environmental protection,” Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the budget committee, said in a statement.

It was unclear how this new spending would affect the U.S. budget deficit because the projections were not included by the White House.

The budget is “light on details and heavy on borrowing,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement. “It relies on an entire decade of rosy economic assumptions for the vast majority ​of its improvements in the nation’s finances.”

In a Friday social ​media post, Trump asserted that his administration’s pursuit against fraud ⁠could “balance our American Budget,” a claim met with skepticism from budget experts.

However, the president and his team relish more funding fights with Democratic lawmakers, arguing in the documents that savings will be found “by reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized, and wasteful programs, and by returning state and local responsibilities to their respective governments.”

Some proposed cuts follow the Trump administration’s pursuit against “green energy” spending, as well as eliminating nearly 30 Justice ​Department programs they deem “weaponized” against the American people, along with other initiatives, like cutting the $315 million National Endowment for Democracy.

NASA CUTS AFTER ARTEMIS LAUNCH

There are also big cuts proposed to many ​major federal departments, including a 19% ⁠decrease for the U.S. agriculture department, a 12.5% cut for the U.S. health department and a 52% cut for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Elsewhere, Trump’s budget requests a 13% increase to “maximize” the Justice Department’s “capacity to bring violent criminals to justice,” as well as maintaining high spending for homeland security and immigration enforcement at $2.2 billion, which the administration said will pay for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, 41,500 detention beds, and 30,000 “family unit beds.”

Two days after NASA launched its most ambitious mission in decades, sending four astronauts on a mission around the moon under its Artemis ⁠program, the White ​House asked for a 23% decrease for that agency, including a $3.6 billion cut to the agency’s science unit that would cancel roughly 40 programs.

Trump’s budget included $152 ​million for his idea to return the former Alcatraz prison island to active duty, and $481 million to increase hiring of air traffic controllers to bulk up staffing in airport towers across the country amid rising concerns about understaffing and air safety.

Pet projects for Trump are also funded, like a $10 billion mandatory fund to establish the “Presidential ​Capital Stewardship Program” within the National Park Service “to coordinate, plan, and execute targeted, priority construction and beautification projects in and around Washington, D.C.”

Notice what’s missing from that last paragraph. Projections. The White House announced a $500 billion surge in military spending, and couldn’t be bothered to tell us what it does to the deficit. Because they already know, and the number isn’t good.

Here’s what the fiscal ship actually looks like: $39 trillion in debt, a deficit that grew larger this year than last, and a budget that doesn’t touch Social Security or Medicare, which are the two programs eating the federal balance sheet alive. The 10% cuts they’re proposing to non-defense spending are real, and they will hurt real people. But in the end, they’ll feel like a rounding error next to a $500 billion military expansion and two entitlement programs that Congress won’t touch on pain of electoral death.

This is what the endgame of fiat currency looks like. Not a dramatic collapse, but the slow, grinding logic of a system that can only ever spend more. Wars require it. Elections require it. The debt itself requires it (you have to borrow to pay the interest on what you already borrowed). Every off-ramp gets paved over. Every “pivot to fiscal responsibility” turns out to be a pivot toward the next category of spending that’s politically untouchable.

Russell Vought says the fiscal ship has turned. But, the bond market, sitting on $39 trillion of U.S. paper, won’t be convinced.

What this means for gold and silver:

Wartime spending plus a structurally exploding deficit plus a central bank that will eventually be asked to monetize all of it. This is the environment that precious metals were built for. Gold already knows. It’s been telling you for months. Silver, as always, is late to the party but will arrive loudly when it does.

The last time Washington invoked WWII-level spending comparisons, gold went on a decade-long run. The difference now is that we’re starting with $39 trillion already on the books, a reserve currency that the rest of the world is quietly diversifying away from, and a war with no clear exit.

“Fiscal futility is ending.” Sure it is. Buy the dip, imo.