The big, beautiful reconciliation bill now before the Senate needs to reflect President Donald Trump’s agenda, which the American people voted for: reducing wasteful spending and stimulating economic growth, cutting taxes for American families, securing America’s border and enforcing our immigration laws, and revitalizing the U.S. military. And in large measure, it delivers—which is why a recent move to reduce the amount earmarked for border security should be strongly opposed.
The House version, developed by conservatives in close collaboration with the president, contains more than $150 billion in border security and immigration enforcement spending and $150 billion in defense spending. Significant defense and border/immigration funding is necessary to rebuild America’s Navy, defend the homeland from missile attacks from abroad, and to reverse the invasion enabled by Biden’s open-border policies. Conservatives who favor the Trump agenda should support it.
The border security and immigration provisions are particularly important, as evidenced by the recent lawlessness and rioting in Los Angeles, including attacks on federal law enforcement by criminal elements waving foreign flags. Among other things, the House-passed version of the bill gives significantly increases resources for Customs and Border Protection, and for ICE to hire more agents, purchase more detention beds, and obtain transportation to remove deportable aliens from the American interior.
The original House version provided just $5 billion in Department of Defense support to the border security mission. Unfortunately, the newest Senate version cuts this by moving $1.7 billion into other priorities, even though more than the original $5 billion is desperately needed for the Trump administration to continue reversing the open-border policies of the last administration, maintaining a secure border, and negating the Mexican cartels’ ability to move fentanyl into the U.S.
The Department of Defense has an important role to play in assisting other agencies with border security. Indeed, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently deployed the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles to protect federal immigration agents and detention centers under attack.
The lawlessness in Los Angeles and on our southern border is a direct result of abandoning the rule of law. This bill puts America back on the path to restored sovereignty—defending our borders, empowering law enforcement, and reaffirming that citizenship matters. Not only should the original $5 billion not be reduced for “other priorities,” the amount should be increased to address the realities on the ground, especially contending with the Mexican cartels.
The biggest buckets of spending in the defense section reflect the key national security priorities of the Trump administration, namely: revitalizing American shipbuilding, protecting the homeland through the construction of the Golden Dome missile-defense system, and upgrading America’s antiquated strategic deterrent to deter aggression from America’s adversaries.
America was once the world’s preeminent shipbuilder, but no more. In recent decades America’s shipbuilding has stagnated, resulting in tens of thousands of shipyard jobs lost, economic competitiveness with China and other Asian economies diminished, ballooning costs for the construction of U.S. Navy ships, and a hollowed-out U.S. Merchant Marine that would struggle to support the U.S. Navy logistically in a major conflict.
This bill goes some way toward reversing that trend, with major block purchases of commercial and auxiliary ships that will send a strong demand signal to American shipyards to invest in labor and infrastructure and expand American shipbuilding capacity. The block purchases in this bill represent smart, long-term investments that will give American shipbuilders and munitions manufacturers the certainty they need to expand production, hire skilled workers, and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains. It contains some funding for U.S. Navy warships as well, although more of this will be needed in the normal defense spending process of the National Defense Authorization Act if Congress wants to reverse the shrinking number of warships in the U.S. Navy.
For conservatives who want peace through strength—a more peaceful and prosperous America that only engages in military action when core national security interests are threatened—support for the Golden Dome missile-defense system and the replacement of our aging nuclear deterrent is essential.
The U.S. nuclear arsenal has prevented strategic attack against the United States since the end of the Second World War but has been on life support since the end of the Cold War. As China engages in a massive nuclear buildup and Russia modernizes its nuclear arsenal, the United States must modernize its arsenal to ensure that no nuclear armed adversary has the ability to threaten the homeland. The Golden Dome, a comprehensive and partially space-based missile defense system for the North American continent, will give pause to major nuclear actors like China or Russia and potentially entirely negate threats from smaller but still dangerous actors like North Korea.
The defense section of this one-time spending bill differs strongly from, say, the Ukraine aid supplementals of the past couple years. Instead of depleting America’s munitions stockpiles, the bill bolsters them. Instead of sending precious American resources to a war that our European allies ought to be taking primary responsibility for, it invests in the U.S. military’s air and naval forces to deter aggression from our primary competitor, China.
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The border security and defense sections of this bill come with a series of measures to reduce government waste and fraud, especially by strengthening work requirements for able-bodied welfare recipients without children or other dependents. They would also bolster economic growth through deregulation and tax cuts, including tax cuts designed to make it easier to build factories in America.
Of course, the reconciliation bill is just one of the many vehicles through which President Trump is seeking to reduce the federal deficit and rein in federal spending. The Office of Management and Budget has also sent a recissions package to Congress to begin codifying the work of DOGE, which has already removed over 59,000 duplicative federal jobs. All of this serves to expand our economic horizons and give money back to the Americans who worked hard to earn it in the first place.
The Big, Beautiful Bill must ensure that Trump’s agenda is enacted, with enough funding to carry out mass deportations, secure the border, revitalize the U.S. Navy, and build Golden Dome, even while it also delivers on tax cuts and serious reductions in federal spending.
