Defense Secretary Jim Mattis finished his first round of congressional testimony on the 2018 defense budget Monday night, and it showed the challenge he faces this week in selling President Trump’s plan to lawmakers in the House and Senate.
Mattis spent much of his first appearance before the House Armed Services Committee defending the budget proposal from defense hawks who believe it is far too small.
“The administration’s budget request of $603 billion for base requirements is 6 percent above the FY 2017 enacted levels and 3 percent above the last Obama administration budget proposal,” Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in his opening statement. “It is also $37 billion below what this committee assessed last fall was needed and about $58 billion below the FY ’12 Gates budget, which was validated by the bipartisan National Defense Panel.”
The secretary is likely to hear similar criticism Tuesday morning when he testifies to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., holds the chairman gavel and has led calls to increase Trump’s proposed Defense Department base budget from $603 billion to $640 billion.
Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will then move to appropriations committees in the Senate and House on Wednesday and Thursday.
“I need bipartisan support for this budget request,” Mattis declared in his opening remarks to the House, which included deep criticism of Congress and its role in degrading the military in recent years.
The Pentagon’s $574 billion base budget proposal includes few of the big increases in troops, ships and aircraft many defense hawks on Capitol Hill were hoping for, but Mattis said it will shore up the existing forces by beginning to relieve overworked troops and patch up equipment worn out over years of of war.
“What we are doing admittedly is filing in holes,” but it will put the armed forces on a path to recover and toward a major buildup in the coming years, he said.
Mattis is likely to repeat his core budget message to the House in his other testimony this week — to begin repairs to the military, lawmakers need to lift federal spending caps on defense and pass an annual budget on time this year instead of another in a series of stop-gap bills.
It included some tough criticism Monday night, including a claim that Congress’ budget debates have put troops at greater risk.
“Congress as a whole has met the present challenge with lassitude, not leadership,” Mattis said.
But it is unclear whether Mattis’ pitch will connect with Republican defense hawks wanting a military buildup this year, Democrats opposing Trump’s related nondefense budget cuts, and fiscal hawks wary of breaking existing budget caps.
Thornberry said the president had promised to expand the Navy from 275 to 350 ships, the Army from 476,000 to 540,000 active-duty soldiers, and add hundreds of fighter jets.
“So, for this budget in ’18 that we’ve gotten so far, it does not really advance any of those goals,” Thornberry said.
Lawmakers took particular aim at plans to grow the Navy. The shipbuilding request for 2018 includes only nine ships, short of what the Navy and others say is needed to build to toward a fleet of 350 ships.
“We know that we need more ships, but we’ve got to get our plan together,” Mattis said, explaining that the ship numbers must be based on a strategy review, not just numbers alone.
Mattis also defended a request for another round of base realignment and closure, saying the savings gained from closing excess military facilities is enough to pay for 120 F/A-18 Super Hornets, 300 AH-64 Apache helicopters or four Virginia-class submarines.
