President Trump will request $639 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2018, including $65 billion in the overseas contingency operations account, according to his budget blueprint released Thursday.
The request is expected to be $574 billion for the Defense Department’s base budget, which is a 10 percent increase from the funding level in the 2017 continuing resolution, according to the budget document released Thursday morning. The $65 billion for overseas operations was what analysts anticipated and is in line with the request for fiscal 2017. More details are expected when the administration releases its full budget in May.
Here’s a chart to help make sense of all the defense budget numbers being thrown around #BudgetMath pic.twitter.com/MWTg8zBbw4
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) March 16, 2017
The number is just below what Obama proposed to spend in fiscal 2018 in his 2013 future years defense plan, according to a chart posted by Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump’s FY18 defense budget compared to other budget proposals pic.twitter.com/Hhn3p36mIE
— Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) March 16, 2017
The $639 billion covers fiscal 2018 funding for the Defense Department, and is not the same as the total request for all national defense at $668 billion. That includes money for defense programs that fall outside the Defense Department, such as nuclear work at the Department of Energy. The total national defense figure minus the $65 billion in OCO gives the $603 billion number OMB director Mick Mulvaney talked about last month, Harrison explained.
As a result, Harrison said this plan is “not going to make [Sen. John] McCain any happier.” McCain released a statement Thursday morning doubling down on his call for a $640 billion defense base budget — $37 billion more than Trump’s — and calling Trump’s plan inadequate.
“It is clear that this budget proposed today cannot pass the Senate. Moving forward, it is imperative that we work together to reach a bipartisan agreement that provides sufficient funds to rebuild the military,” McCain said. “Failure to do so will only lead to more political dysfunction that has inflicted such harm on our men and women in uniform over the past six years.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry, McCain’s counterpart in the House, said Thursday morning that the budget request is still too low, but is at least “one step” toward improving readiness and replacing aging equipment.
“It is clear to virtually everyone that we have cut our military too much and that it has suffered enormous damage,” he said. “Unfortunately, the administration’s budget request is not enough to repair that damage and to rebuild the military as the president has discussed.”
The fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act gave $551.7 billion for base Defense Department needs and $59.5 billion in overseas contingency operations. Congress also passed a $5.8 billion supplemental request from Obama to fund additional operations in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State.
The increase in funding proposed by Trump will largely go toward accelerating the fight against the Islamic State and rebuilding readiness that military leaders say is reaching critical levels after years of budget cuts. Some of the areas it will focus on include “insufficient stocks of critical munitions, personnel gaps, deferred maintenance and modernization, cyber vulnerabilities, and degraded facilities,” according to the plan.
Each of the services is expected to grow under Trump’s budget request, which will reverse personnel cuts to the Army, serve as a “down payment” to grow the Navy’s fleet, make sure the Marine Corps is “ready and fully equipped” and invest in the Air Force, including funding for additional F-35 joint strike fighters built by Lockheed Martin.
The $603 billion number that had been previously reported drew criticism on Capitol Hill. Republicans thought the boost, which was only 3 percent above Obama’s fiscal 2018 plan, was not enough and Democrats would not support a plan that paid for an increase to defense by cutting non-defense.
Because of this, Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, put the odds of the budget passing Congress as written at just 10 percent and said fiscal 2018 is likely to start under a continuing resolution. Likely scenarios that could pass Congress include cutting the defense increase to just $27 billion, while investing the other $27 billion in non-defense priorities, or leaving defense at the proposed level while restoring a majority of the cuts to non-defense spending, though it’s unclear if doing so would create a larger deficit without knowing details of Trump’s tax plan.
Mulvaney has also been a long-time critic of the overseas contingency operations account, which is meant to fund war costs but has been used for base requirements since it is not subject to budget caps. The budget blueprint suggests that use of OCO to fund base requirements will continue through at least fiscal 2018.
