Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed Thursday night that the military budget was increased by $700 billion last year.
“Just last year we gave the military a $700 billion budget increase, which they didn’t even ask for. They’re like, ‘we don’t want another fighter jet.’ They’re like, ‘don’t give us another nuclear bomb.’ They didn’t even ask for it, and we gave it to them. So we need to prioritize what we want as a nation,” Ocasio-Cortez said on late night comedy talk show, “the Daily Show,” when explaining what the government could do to make universal healthcare possible.
The $700 billion figure refers to the total amount authorized for fiscal 2018 national defense spending, not the increase from the year before.
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Ocasio-Cortez also claimed in her interview that the military never asked for an increase in spending for a “new fighter jet.” Each year, the Pentagon requests billions in new aircraft and weapons spending. For example, the fiscal 2019 budget proposal to Congress requested 77 F-35 joint strike fighters.
Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said the spending increases under the Trump administration don’t come close to fixing the military’s readiness problems.
“As one of the few veterans serving in Congress, we know firsthand the challenges that our troops have had with sequestration over the last years. And they have been doing everything they can to do, but I equate the two-year budget deal to putting a tourniquet on a wound,” McSally told the Washington Examiner. “We’re just trying to stop the bleeding and stop the readiness crisis that we have so that we can start turning it around.”
The two year budget deal set national defense spending levels at $700 billion for fiscal 2018 and $716 billion for fiscal 2019.
Bronx native Ocasio-Cortez, a newcomer to politics, beat out 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination in her district last month.
