Experts cautioned defense industry on Monday not to get overly excited for the increased defense budgets predicted under President Trump because it’s unlikely the proposed numbers can actually pass Congress.
“It’s not Christmas in July and I just keep hearing this euphoria in defense circles,” Mackenzie Eaglen, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, said during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, put out a white paper last week that asked for a $640 billion defense top line, not including overseas contingency operations funding, which Eaglen said is an attempt to “lead this White House, which is very, very green.”
Experts said the top line in the administration’s request might be close to that, but that there is a long way to go from the time a budget request is put on paper until it passes Congress and is actually appropriated.
Eaglen said the energy on Capitol Hill to be bold and get things done is likely to be crushed by reality, including partisan infighting and the fact that Congress has little time to tackle all of these big picture items, such as repealing the Budget Control Act caps, repealing Obamacare and approving a new Supreme Court justice.
Trump has also promised to pass a defense supplemental for fiscal 2017 within the first 100 days of his term, a priority that many Republicans on Capitol Hill support. But Eaglen said there is “no chance” it happens within the time from the president set up since the government is still operating under a continuing resolution.
“It just doesn’t even make sense,” she said.
In fact, she predicted that Trump will begin fiscal 2018 on a continuing resolution, just like the administrations before him.
“It’s shockingly remarkable how you can just click replay over and over,” she said.
While Republicans do have control of the House, Senate and White House, Todd Harrison with CSIS pointed out that that doesn’t mean they can simply push their agenda through. Many things in the Senate require a 60-vote threshold to pass, so some Democrats will have to also support the plan. And fractures within the Republican Party mean different factions often vote different ways, rather than the entire party operating as one voting bloc.
One of the biggest question marks is how the new administration will handle the overseas contingency operations account, which is meant to be used to pay for overseas missions but critics say has become a slush fund for other defense priorities since it is not subject to the Budget Control Act caps.
Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said adding to OCO is the easiest way to boost defense spending, because it doesn’t require Congress to deal with the Budget Control Act. But it’s unclear whether Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a staunch opponent of OCO who Trump tapped to head the Office of Management and Budget, will redefine what can be paid for through that fund.
