The Defense Department on Tuesday defended its newly unveiled proposal for a $574.5 billion base defense budget and a $64.6 billion war fund amid criticism from Capitol Hill.
The budget plan would be the next step toward rebuilding a military that has been depleted in recent years by capped funding and a heavy workload, the department said. It would focus on troops, military training and maintenance while keeping pace with past plans for purchasing big-ticket hardware such as fighter jets and ships.
It will now go to Congress where defense hawks have already said it follows Obama administration defense plans too closely and does not provide enough funding for military needs. Sen. John McCain called it “dead on arrival” Tuesday, prompting defense officials to defend the spending decisions.
John Roth, acting DoD comptroller, called the budget a “significant increased commitment” by the Trump administration over the current year’s $523 billion base budget and said the department built a plan it believes can be passed by Congress.
“A lot of the reaction we’ve gotten so far with our meetings with some of the [Congress] members is, ‘Why didn’t you ask for more?’ ” Roth said. “So we will have to see. Obviously, it is going to take a lot in Congress, in both the House and Senate to try to get it done and we are here to help in any way we can.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the military service chiefs will travel to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks to testify in favor of the plan, which is the first full-year budget written by the administration.
The president has promised a historic military buildup that includes major increases in the size of the Army, the Navy fleet and Air Force tactical aircraft, and the Defense Department described the proposal released Tuesday as the second step in that effort.
The 2018 budget unveiled Tuesday would keep the Army at the larger size of 476,000 active-duty soldiers approved by Congress last year.
It calls for purchasing 70 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters and 14 Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. The Navy would buy eight new ships, including an aircraft carrier, two destroyers and a littoral combat ship. The figures are in line with projections by the Obama administration.
The $64.6 billion war fund will pay for the fight against the Islamic State in the Middle East, troops in Afghanistan, a beefed up presence to reassure allies in Europe and counterterrorism operations around the world.
The Defense Department is also seeking authority for another round of base closures in 2021, saying the department has 20 percent more infrastructure than it needs, and that a new round could save about $2 billion per year.
The Trump plan for an historic increase in spending could come in future years. Next year’s budget will be the first built under a new national defense strategy, which is still a work in progress, according to the department.
“The erosion of the readiness did not occur in one year and we are not going to be able to satisfy the requirements in one year, it’s going to be a while for us to be able to do that with sustained funding,” said Lt. Gen. Anthony Ierardi, DoD’s joint staff director of force structure, resources and assessment.
The plan faces a raft of political obstacles on Capitol Hill. Chief among them is that the Trump proposal, which totals $603 billion for all baseline defense functions including the nuclear arsenal, busts federal spending caps by $54 billion and would require a deeply divided House and Senate to pass new legislation lifting the limits.
“President Trump’s $603 billion defense budget request is inadequate to the challenges we face, illegal under current law, and part of an overall budget proposal that is dead on arrival in Congress,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a top Republican critic of the administration’s defense plans.
