Sen. Tom Cotton said Tuesday that increasing spending on the military should be among Donald Trump’s first priorities when he comes into office.
Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, said the first order of business needs to be filling the spot on the Supreme Court vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But, shortly after that should be an emergency funding bill for the military for the current year.
“Somewhere around $26 billion … would be appropriate for the remainder of this fiscal year,” Cotton said on MSNBC Tuesday.
He added that the military has been allowed to deteriorate in recent years to the sequester, which needs to be repealed in order to modernize and improve the military.
Cotton said a Trump presidency could end up being similar to Ronald Reagan’s time in office in that he will impose new limits on the United States’ rivals abroad.
Trump will send a message to Iran, Russia and Syria that the actions they’ve gotten away with under President Obama will not be acceptable under the Republican president, Cotton said. He said Iran particularly needs to be on notice that it cannot violate the terms of the nuclear deal, which Cotton still hopes Trump will revoke.
“I hope that Iran will realize that with a new president we’re going to take a much tougher line on their malignant activities around the world,” he said, adding that he’d like to see sanctions reimposed on Iran.
Cotton added that Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to be kept in line by Trump as well. Despite questions abounding throughout the campaign about Trump’s links to the Kremlin, Cotton said he’s expecting Trump to treat Putin the way Reagan treated the Soviet Union.
“This is where a sense of limits and boundaries are important,” he said. “In my opinion, Vladimir Putin has not had that sense in many years.”
Cotton added that the United States will keep to its commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Trump made statements that called into question his commitment to NATO during the campaign and some doubted that he would keep to the Article 5 commitment to back up any NATO ally under attack militarily. But Cotton said that won’t happen.
“Our Article 5 commitment to all our NATO allies is ironclad,” Cotton said.
