Republican defense hawks in Congress argued Monday that President Trump’s proposed boost in defense spending is far too low given all the dangers the U.S. is facing.
“With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said Monday. “We can and must do better.”
Trump plans to raise defense spending to a total of $603 billion, an increase of $54 billion from the levels prescribed in the Budget Control Act. He wants to offset with an equal amount of funding cut from other federal government agencies.
But the heads of the congressional panels that oversee the armed services say that won’t solve the budgetary problems that the Pentagon is confronting. McCain has recently pushed for an increase to $640 billion, although that also includes broader national security funding, and his House counterpart agreed that more money is needed.
“Over the course of the Obama administration, our military funding was cut 20 percent while the world grew more dangerous,” said House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. “While we cannot repair all of the damage done by those cuts in a single year, we can and should do more than this level of funding will allow.”
Trump’s team touted the $54 billion defense spending hike as a major increase that keeps Trump’s “promise to undo the military sequester” imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
“It does all of that without adding to the currently projected FY 2018 deficit,” Mick Mulvaney, the new director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters Monday.
Thornberry and McCain seem poised for a political fight with Trump. “The administration will have to make clear which problems facing our military they are choosing not to fix,” Thornberry said.
