Obstacles in Congress and demands for non-defense spending could derail Donald Trump’s plans to invest in and rebuild the military, military analysts warned on Tuesday.
On the campaign trail, Trump talked about doing away with the Budget Control Act caps that have restrained military spending and increasing the size of the U.S. military, including a 350-ship Navy and 36 Marine battalions.
But Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that’s easier said than done.
“I do not think it’s a given that we’re going to see major increase in defense budget, at least not right away. He is going to have to negotiate with Congress to do this,” Harrison said at an event co-hosted by Bloomberg Government and the National Defense Industrial Association.
Harrison called the Budget Control Act the “number one” defense budgetary issue he’s going to have to deal with on his first day in office.
Most lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that the country should be spending more on defense given the eroded readiness and the threats facing the country today. But Democrats have previously been unwilling to support more defense spending above the Budget Control Act caps without a comparable increase in domestic spending.
Roger Zakheim, a partner at Covington and Burling, said there’s an “opportunity” for a deal to raise the budget caps given the consensus and lack of controversy surrounding defense spending, but that it wouldn’t be the first time arguments about non-defense spending derailed a deal on defense.
Another hurdle to overcome is how to offset additional spending to avoid increasing the deficit. It’s unclear where Trump will find the money to pay for the increased defense investment and buildup since he has said he wants to cut taxes and won’t make any cuts to social security.
Having Sen. Jeff Sessions in the Pentagon’s top spot could go a long way to reassure fiscal conservatives to boost defense spending. Zakheim said he “can’t think of anyone better” than the Alabama senator on the short list for defense secretary to urge Congress to spend without worrying about the fiscal issues since he’s the one often worrying about budgets that exceed the caps.
Ultimately, Trump’s conflicting statements during the campaign make it difficult to predict how he will spend once he’s in the White House.
“We don’t yet know which Trump is going to govern,” Harrison said.
Asked what advice they’d give to the next president, Byron Callan, the managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, urged Trump to put some people who work in defense industry into positions in his administration.
Harrison’s advice was to work on a four-year budget deal to provide stability and to stop using the overseas contingency operations account as a slush fund. In recent years, that part of the budget, which is supposed to fund U.S. operations overseas, has been used to give extra money to the Pentagon while skirting the budget caps.
