The new Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has recommended a defense budget $16 billion larger than President Obama’s proposed budget, but far below the figure that military and national security experts suggest is needed for maintaining readiness. Mac Thornberry, the 11-term Texas Republican heading the House committee, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that his number is “just a start” to the effort to maintain a strong and agile American military.
Thornberry sent a letter signed by 30 other GOP members on Armed Services to House Budget Committee chairman Tom Price last Friday, recommending a national defense budget of $577 billion. That number represents the level of national defense spending before the sequestration of defense funds that took place as a result of the Budget Control Act, which has cut funding to $523 billion, and will reduce it further next year to $499 billion. If the $577 billion can’t be reached in the next year, Thornberry’s letter adds, then a minimum of $566 billion (the amount offered in last year’s Republican budget) should be spent in fiscal year 2016, with the higher level recommended for the following years.
Thornberry’s recommendation is higher than the $561 billion proposed by the Obama White House. In the Senate, meanwhile, Armed Services chairman John McCain and his Democratic counterpart Jack Reed have also recommended $577 billion. Republican House member Mike Turner, the chairman of the Armed Services Appropriations Subcommittee, has penned a letter to John Boehner requesting that the House speaker commit to supporting a defense budget of no less than $561 billion. Turner’s letter received 70 signatures, making it the largest show of support in Congress for busting the sequestration caps on defense spending.
All the spending proposals, though, remain well below the $638 billion recommended by the National Defense Panel (NDP), a congressionally mandated review board, in its July 2014 report. The NDP’s number comes from a 2012 proposal by former Defense secretary Robert Gates. And Thornberry admits that neither his own budget recommendation nor the president’s will be enough to achieve military readiness.
“We’ve been meeting with some of the services chiefs, and in essence, what they’re saying is [the Obama] budget helps replenish where we were in the past two or three years. It does not prepare us for the future,” says Thornberry. “This is clearly inadequate, and even the numbers we recommended in our letter are clearly inadequate for everything that needs to be done.”
The chairman says his proposed number gives Congress the best start at a path to reaching the Gates recommendations in future years without overwhelming the Defense Department. “I think we definitely need to be moving in this direction,” Thornberry says. “You can’t just put a gigantic load of money on the Pentagon all at once and expect them to spend it efficiently. And truthfully, I went down on my recommendation a little more on the cautious level because I know that none of this counts if you don’t pass something.”
But Thornberry’s letter was just that: a recommendation. The House Budget Committee has the ultimate responsibility for drafting the budget resolution that sets the levels for defense and the rest of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Thornberry says he speaks with Budget chairman Tom Price daily, and figures the likeliest range of negotiation on a final defense number is somewhere between the president’s budget proposal of $561 billion and his own $577 billion figure. But Thornberry refused to draw a line at a figure that would be too low to receive his support, saying he doesn’t think it is “ever good to draw lines.”
“I think it would be really hard for me to support a defense budget that would be lower than President Obama’s defense budget,” he says. “And I think it would be really hard for lots of Republicans in the House and the Senate to support a defense budget that is lower than what he recommended.”
At a recent retreat with members of Congress, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the president’s defense budget the “lower ragged edge” of what it takes to defend the nation. Thornberry says characterizations like Dempsey’s, along with the aggression from the likes of ISIS and Vladimir Putin, has changed attitudes among his Republican colleagues in the House. They now tend to support for a more robust defense budget than in recent years, when austerity often reigned supreme. “I believe that many more of them have a better understanding of the threat environment than they did a year ago,” he says.
Much of that also comes from concerns from members’ own constituents. “The American people are more focused on national security related issues than they’ve been in a long time,” says Thornberry. “I get that in my district. I have so many questions about the things we see on videos and what Putin’s doing. I think the American people are focused on this issue.”
