The very public budget fight between the defense secretary and the Navy could serve as an alarm to President-elect Trump that he needs to pay attention to the shipbuilding portion of the fiscal year 2018 budget, according to one expert.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus sent a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter this week informing him that he would be ignoring the top line provided by the Pentagon in his budget submission for fiscal year 2018, because adhering to it would impede the Navy from performing its mission. The Pentagon reportedly asked him to cut about $17 billion over the next five years from the sea service’s budget.
“If you ultimately decide to submit a budget that takes away the ability of the Navy and Marine Corps to do their job, it will not have my support, and I will make my objections widely known,” said the memo, which was obtained and posted by Defense News.
Nora Bensahel, a distinguished scholar in residence at American University, said she expects that Carter will do just that, but that the public disagreement could serve as a way to alert Trump’s team that the shipbuilding portion of the budget needs some rewriting, especially because this was such a priority for him on the campaign trail.
“By raising it as a point of disagreement, [Mabus] takes a stand on principle and raises the issue to one Trump may consider more strongly,” she said.
When Trump comes into office, the fiscal year 2018 budget will mostly have been completed by Obama’s outgoing team. He’ll have only a few months before it must be delivered to Congress. That means he’ll have some time to tweak parts, but not enough time to rewrite the entire budget, Bensahel said.
Mabus’ remarks may help Trump focus in on shipbuilding as a budget area that needs to be redone, as well as set the Navy up to win any argument about cutting ships, Bensahel said.
Budget debates can often be “very nasty and very sharp,” but it’s “extraordinarily unusual” that a fight like the one between Mabus and Carter spills out into the public. The only reason for the publicity, she said, is the change in administration means the two men will not have to work together anymore.
On the campaign trail, Trump emphasized his plans to boost military spending if elected, including growing the Navy to 350 ships.
Getting that done will require action on Capitol Hill to get rid of the sequester, but it’s “not clear at all” that Congress is willing to do so, Bensahel said. Even within the Republican party, there’s a faction of budget hawks who would rather keep the cuts in place, and Democrats in the Senate are able to filibuster or block actions if they don’t see a comparable lift in caps for non-defense spending.
“A lot has to do with how the politics of the budget on the Hill are going to play out,” she said. “It’s not as simple as saying it’s now a unified government.”
Chris Harmer, a retired Navy commander, said that the public spat between the two military leaders is just a preview of future fights, when the Navy will have to reconcile its plan to build the fleet with a limited budget, especially once they get the bill for the Ohio-class submarine replacement, which will come to tens of billions of dollars.
“In some ways, this is going to be a preview of coming attractions simply because there’s not enough money to handle procurement and operations and maintenance and something will eventually have to give,” he said.
Cuts to shipbuilding can be especially difficult to make up in future budgets, Harmer said, because the defense industry doesn’t have the flexibility to recover from the cancellation or delay of complex, multi-year procurement projects.
