The general tapped by President Trump to head U.S. forces in the Middle East said Tuesday that the administration’s plan to cut the defense budget will increase risk to the military.
The Pentagon is now looking at who will take the brunt of Trump’s order to slash next year’s budget from $733 billion to $700 billion, Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“Anything below the $733 billion would increase risk and that risk would be manifested across the force,” said McKenzie, who is nominated to lead U.S. Central Command. “We are in the process now, very carefully across the department, of examining the details of what the nature of that risk would be, who would it be imposed upon, and the nature of it.”
If confirmed, McKenzie will be responsible for U.S. wars in Syria and Afghanistan as well as a range of other missions in the region, including support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
He was pressed on the unfolding fight over the Pentagon’s budget top line by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the Armed Services chairman who is opposing Trump’s cut and the lower $700 billion budget.
Instead, Inhofe insisted the Pentagon’s original $733 billion plan should be a spending floor for next year — tens of billions more could be needed — and he led off McKenzie’s confirmation hearing by pressing him on it.
The higher budget “is actually below the amount everyone has been prescribing and saying is going to be necessary to meet the competition,” Inhofe said. “It’s a different competition than we’ve ever had before, at least in my opinion.”
The military is still facing grinding insurgencies and counter-terror wars in Syria and Afghanistan but has adopted a new strategy that requires it to pivot to countering major powers Russia and China. The $733 billion plan would be roughly equivalent to this year’s hiked $716 billion defense budget once inflation is calculated, and it would add virtually no new growth.
Trump ordered the Pentagon to scrap that plan in October after nearly a year of work and instead give him a budget shaved by 5 percent down to $700 billion.
