A defense spending blueprint released by Sen. John McCain last week is not only unusual, it’s also likely to “piss a lot of people off,” according to one expert, because it bucks the traditional budget process that should begin with President Trump.
McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, last week released a 33-page white paper titled “Restoring American Power” that called for a $640 billion base defense budget for fiscal 2018, $54 billion more than the level projected for the year by President Obama.
“It’s important to note just how unusual, weird even, this is procedurally. This is not a budget. This is a negotiation,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s going to piss a lot of people off, including the Trump administration.”
Under the normal process, the president releases his budget sometime in February or March, based on input from the services and Pentagon leadership. Congress then reviews the request before coming out with an authorization bill and appropriations bill later in the year. Cancian said McCain, by beating the president to the punch and reversing the normal order, is trying to “push the Trump administration in a particular direction.”
“None of that has happened for [fiscal] 18,” Cancian said, noting that Congress hasn’t even passed a fiscal 2017 budget yet. “This isn’t about a budget, this is a statement of policy.”
McCain’s white paper gets into specifics over the next five years. It includes sections for the four armed services, justifications for increases, specific dollar figures and quantities for specific programs, and concludes with a series of spending tables for the next five years.
Thomas Donnelly, an expert with the American Enterprise Institute, attributed the departure from the norm to “pent-up frustration with the Obama administration and the previous budgetary balance of power.”
Cancian said both the timing of the McCain spending plan’s release and the topline numbers are likely to cause conflict with the new administration. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., a fiscal hawk who Trump picked to lead the Office of Management and Budget, will see the $640 billion as “way too high” and will be “very angry that defense people are trying to lock in a piece of his budget,” Cancian said.
And because McCain’s plan came out first, the president’s plan will be judged against it, up or down.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, McCain’s counterpart in the House, said he has yet to release his plan for fiscal 2018 defense spending, but expects it to be “very consistent” with McCain’s. But Thornberry also said the release of the plan is not an attempt to undermine the new administration. Instead, it’s meant to give them a leg up on multiple defense budget items on their to-do list.
“I gave some of transition people a heads up that we were working on this. When they get to their desks Monday morning, on defense, they have to finish the FY17 budget, then they have promised to have a defense supplemental in the first 100 days. Then they have got to be thinking about FY18, so this doesn’t preempt them or anything, it really tries to give them a head start by detailing specific areas where we think repair work needs to begin,” Thornberry told the Washington Examiner.
The $640 billion McCain topline, which does not include funding for overseas operations, would represent a huge increase over previous budgets. It’s $90 billion more than the fiscal 2017 budget, $54 billion more than what President Obama requested for fiscal 2018 in last year’s budget and $7 billion more than the last pre-sequestration budget produced under Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted for fiscal 2018, according to Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
But analysts were careful to warn that one year of elevated budgets isn’t enough to fix readiness and personnel shortfalls, and that continued investments are needed.
“It’s a big step in the right direction,” said J.V. Venable, a senior research fellow for defense with the Heritage Foundation. “It’s still not enough, but it’s a big move in what we believe is the right path.”
To fund the Pentagon at this level, Congress would also need to repeal the Budget Control Act, which it has failed to do despite criticism of the sequester on both sides of the aisle. Previous efforts to boost defense spending above the caps have been blocked by Democrats who object to spending more on defense without also spending more on non-defense priorities such as the Department of Homeland Security or the CIA.
Venable said this topline could get bipartisan support in a midterm election year in which several red-state Democrats are fighting to keep their seats, but other experts say it’ll be a tough sell.
“Could you put together a deal that you get a large increase like this without an increase in domestic? I think it would be very hard. You have to give the Democrats something,” Cancian said.