The nature of today’s warfare means non-defense agencies are playing a greater role and should receive equivalent relief from budget caps as the Pentagon, Democrats argued on Tuesday.
The remarks from Democrats suggest that President Trump’s efforts to repeal the Budget Control Act will face the same hurdles as those before him, even though the House, Senate and White House are all under Republican control.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that spending outside the Pentagon also keeps the country safe. He pointed to some missions that seem obvious, such as diplomacy efforts at the State Department, humanitarian aid at USAID, disrupting terrorist finances at the Treasury Department and protecting the homeland at the Department of Homeland Security.
But he also raised some missions that keep the country safe but are not traditionally linked to defense.
“Domestic agencies need funding to ensure the resiliency of our electrical grid, the safety of our food, water and medicine, and the protection of all our cyber networks — from those that regulate dams to those that are used during our elections,” Reed said. “One of the military and diplomatic tenets of combating extremism is to provide populations with security and basic needs. But while we help the Afghans build roads, schools, and clean drinking water systems for their villages, I believe we should do the same for American communities.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said services used by those who the military is trying to recruit should be better funded to ensure the Defense Department continues to employ the best and brightest, especially education and nutrition, since many would-be recruits are obese.
“If we neglect or ignore those accounts, we will not have the fighting force we need,” Gillibrand said.
While Trump has said that repealing the Budget Control Act for defense is a key priority, Tuesday’s hearing suggests that it will not be easy, even under a unified Republican government. Congress has previously been unable to undo the Budget Control Act because of a political battle between Republicans and Democrats, in which the GOP wants to increase only defense spending and Democrats will only support a deal that includes an equal increase for non-defense spending.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., acknowledged that areas outside the Pentagon directly contribute to defense, such as intelligence agencies or those that oversee cybersecurity, but did not talk about whether they should get equal relief from budget caps.
“There are other areas of national defense. Homeland security is a major one, CIA, these other agencies that are not strictly defense, particularly in this new kind of warfare that we seem to be engaged in,” McCain said.
