The war in Iran and the Department of Homeland Security shutdown are pushing President Donald Trump’s budget request for fiscal 2027 far beyond the standard delivery window, Trumpworld insiders say.
Congress sets a statutory deadline for the president to deliver a budget request for the coming fiscal year by the first Monday of February, but recent presidents have trended toward submitting their requests weeks after delivering the annual State of the Union address.
Still, Trump is just days away from hitting a month since his State of the Union address, and multiple sources pointed to Iran and the DHS shutdown for the delay.
Two former administration officials, both of whom maintain close contacts with the White House and are familiar with the budget timeline, tell the Washington Examiner that the White House Office of Management and Budget had been targeting a late-March submission, but that it remains to be seen whether that window will extend further into April.
“It’s still [to be decided], but the latest chatter is OMB is slow-rolling it while the overseas situation and DHS lane shake out. They don’t want to lock in numbers or policy positions that could get overtaken by events or complicate the Hill strategy,” one of those sources explained. “My guess is it comes once there’s a bit more stability on both fronts.”
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The second source stressed that the “elephant in the room” is Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran. Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top administration officials had originally stated that the war would be completed in four to six weeks from the February 28 launch date, but the president himself has told reporters that the U.S. is operating well ahead of that initial schedule.
“Look, the president holds all the cards here. He can end this whenever he wants, but the situation is incredibly fluid, and he’s certainly not going to pull a [former President George W.] Bush and just declare victory prematurely. He won’t let this thing balloon into another Iraq,” that person told the Washington Examiner. “But you know the White House is meticulously tracking just how much all of this will cost. It’s going to be a big price tag, and I think they’ll want to wrap that up in the budget. I don’t think he’ll want to do a supplemental [budget request].”
A third former White House official suggested the March 30 target may still in play for a “skinny” budget, a general outline of the top-line discretionary buckets, with the full budget to come sometime in April.
Both the White House and OMB officials declined to comment on the budget timeline.
Earlier this year, the president announced that he planned to request a whopping $1.5 trillion budget for the Pentagon, a roughly 50% increase from the budget Congress approved for FY26.
Trump has argued that the increase in defense spending is necessary to modernize America’s Navy. Last year, he announced plans to build a “Golden Fleet,” including a new line of “Trump Class” warships. The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that the final price tag for his North American missile defense system, named the “Golden Dome,” could exceed $800 billion. Congress only appropriated $150 billion for the Golden Dome in this year’s budget.
Furthermore, Trump’s $1.5 trillion figure didn’t cover, at least publicly, the total costs for the war in Iran. On Sunday, White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett pegged the cost of the conflict at around $12 billion in the first two weeks of airstrikes alone.
That number is expected to grow and will eventually account for the cost of restocking the Pentagon’s missiles and interceptors, not to mention potential extended deployments of American service members in the region. Trump said Thursday that the Pentagon has asked the White House to sign off on $200 billion in additional funding for the war effort.
Hegseth told reporters Thursday morning that the total “could move.”
“Obviously it takes, it takes money to kill bad guys, so we’re going back to Congress and our folks to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition and everything’s refilled, and not just refilled, but above and beyond,” he said at a Pentagon press conference.
Some military policy experts previously told the Washington Examiner that the United States has a strategic interest in maintaining some type of policing operation in the Strait of Hormuz after the war concludes as leverage over China, which currently receives between 25-50% of its oil from Iran.
As for the DHS component, the White House suggested to reporters earlier this week that little progress has been made toward negotiating an end to the weekslong partial government shutdown with congressional Democrats.
The White House formally submitted a proposal to Capitol Hill detailing a number of concessions the president was prepared to make on immigration officer operating procedures, including requiring non-undercover agents to wear body cameras and to self-identify while performing field work, as well as standing up new mechanisms for congressional oversight of detention facilities. However, a senior White House official claimed the counteroffer Democrats sent back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue indicated they were “unserious” about the negotiating process.
“This offer is reasonable. It is serious. It is the product of work that has gone on almost since the shutdown began,” one official claimed. “The Democrats have once again responded with a counter that does not indicate the seriousness that this moment needs.”
Presidential budget requests rarely resemble the final budgets congressional appropriators send back to the president’s desk. Instead, they serve as a general emphasis on the White House’s spending priorities for the year.
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Furthermore, Trump certainly isn’t the first president to let his budget lag well beyond the statutory window. In 2013, former President Barack Obama waited nearly two months after delivering his State of the Union before formally submitting his fiscal 2014 request.
“Missing the window is not a big deal, even if the media is trying to spin in to one,” a longtime, out-of-government adviser to the president told the Washington Examiner. “The big deal would be sending it over to the Hill early, and then having to go back and ask for more money. So they’re playing it smart.”