The Arms Control Association has called on the U.S. Congress to reject and cut President Donald Trump’s request for a defence budget of $1.5 trillion.

Coming after several years of large increases to defence spending and in the absence of demonstrable progress in diplomatic steps to avoid arms racing and unnecessary military expenditure, the request is an unjustified and indefensible imposition on the American people, according to ACA.

“Both this administration and its predecessor have failed to convincingly justify several years of explosive growth in spending on nuclear weapons modernization and upgrades, an ambitious and destabilising scheme for strategic missile interceptors, and other major weapons systems. The new budget request far exceeds any justifiable requirements, will line the pockets of military contractors, and steal taxpayer funds away from programs that address the real needs of Americans,” said Daryl Kimball, ACA’s executive director in a statement on Monday.

Mr Kimball noted that as the Trump administration “seeks the largest military spending increase in U.S. history and massive increases in Defence and Energy Department spending on nuclear weapons, it has failed to seriously pursue lower-cost strategies to mitigate national security dangers, including effective nonproliferation diplomacy with Iran and bilateral nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia”.

The budget, according to the statement, calls for massive increases in military spending, including $71.4 billion for Pentagon nuclear weapons programmes, $85.8 billion for missile defense and the president’s Golden Dome project, and $27.4 billion for nuclear weapons activities at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“The United States is already set to spend more than $946 billion on its nuclear weapons systems in the decade between 2025 and 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That estimate does not include recent hikes in cost estimates for several major nuclear modernization programs,” noted ACA senior analyst Xiaodon Liang.

Despite Mr Trump’s expressions of interest in “denuclearisation talks” with Russia and China, the administration failed to pursue a new nuclear arms control framework with Russia to succeed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in the year before the agreement’s expiration on February 5, 2026, while also failing to engage China on a bilateral basis, said the ACA statement.

“While it is tragic that U.S. and Russian leaders failed to engage in meaningful negotiations on a successor agreement to New START, it is also notable that following the expiration of New START, the United States proposed multilateral strategic stability talks as a means to achieving a ‘new era’ of nuclear arms control,” Mr Kimball noted.

Mr Kimball added, “We also oppose the president’s proposed budget hikes because it is designed, in part, to pay for his costly, reckless, and illegal war of choice against Iran. American consumers are already paying for the president’s mistake at the gas pump and their tax dollars should not be used to support an expansion of a war that should never have been launched.”

ACA, therefore, called on Congress to reject Mr Trump’s budget request.

ACA is one of a diverse array of organizations, led by the Coalition on Human Needs and Public Citizen, which jointly issued an open letter on April 3 to Congress calling on members to oppose the $1.5 trillion budget request.