U.S. Representative Brendan Boyle (D-PA), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, grilled Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russ Vought on Wednesday regarding President Trump’s proposed 2027 budget, which includes a 42 percent increase in military spending.
That amounts to a $442 billion increase “on top of an already record high for defense,” said Boyle.
Boyle read aloud what President Trump had said at a private fundraising event earlier this month. Trump told the crowd that he told Vought, “don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.”
BOYLE: Trump said ‘the US can’t take of daycare, Medicaid, or Medicare, that has to be up to the states’
VOUGHT: The president doesn’t want to to that
BOYLE: He said it. So you’re disagreeing with the president?
VOUGHT: He’s talking about fraud in those programs
BOYLE: Excuse… pic.twitter.com/iD6JxRnFR8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 15, 2026
Later in his remarks, the President repeated that “it’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.” He added, “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Boyle noted that he serves as a member of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliament, and said, “I am no pacifist, I believe in a strong national defense. I believe the world is at its best when the United States is the strongest military.”
The Congressman, however, objected to the proportion of the funding in a broad landscape of need, criticizing “the idea of paying a 42 percent increase in this military, in this Department of Defense, and at the same time cut Medicaid, Medicare, not pay for childcare, all of these things the American people need…are a reflection of priorities that are out of whack.”
When Boyle asked Vought about the President’s comments — that such coverage should be left up to the states, and that the federal government “has to pay more for wars” — Vought replied the President was “talking about fraud in those programs.”
Boyle pointed out that Trump “never used the word ‘fraud’” in his remarks.