On Tuesday, the White House announced that they will seek a "historic" increase in defense spending, roughly 9 percent, bringing the Pentagon budget up to an estimated $603 billion.
"We're going to spend a lot more money on military," Trump told Fox & Friends in an interview which aired on Tuesday. "We're going to get involved in negotiating. We're going to be able to get, I think, a lot more product for a buck and I'm going to be very, very serious about it.”
Many are not thrilled with his proposal, and believe that the funding for such an increase, which they observe is unnecessary, will come from cutting back on domestic programs.
“It shows that what Donald Trump is preparing to do is, on the one hand, give away these massive handouts, I mean this is $54 billion in, effectively, subsidies to the military industrial complex, to Boeing, to Lockheed Martin, and other corporations,” Walter Smolarek, producer of Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear stated. “And on the other hand, [Trump will] slash tens of billions of dollars, perhaps [Trump] will cut more than $54 billion from different social programs, from government support for the arts, from culture, from science and education, from things that are actually of value to human beings, not just corporations."
Smolarek claimed that, “it is a government of looting” and “unrestrained capitalism,” which will see resources redistributed upwards to the “top.01 percent, or whatever you want to call them.” He said that by hiring bankers to run his administration Trump undermines the message of populism that defined his campaign.
Supporters of Trump’s cabinet choices contend that the President is simply hiring people who have been shown to be successful in their respective fields, and therefore have a high likelihood of success within the administration.
Trump’s message before Congress will also focus on "solving real problems for real people," and focusing on "economic opportunity,” according to a senior administration official who spoke to the Associated Press.
Trump will likely also speak on his goal of replacing Obamacare, an extremely contentious national issue.
The speech is expected to include a look back on what the administration has already accomplished since his January 20 inauguration, including the withdrawal of the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The President has also expressed his willingness to scrap trade deals with Canada and Mexico if the details are not modified to be more beneficial to Washington.