As Donald Trump tries to transform himself from reality TV star and King of Twitter into something more substantive and presidential, his principal argument is that he’s fulfilling his campaign promises. For several weeks now, the White House has been boasting that he is “already achieving results for the American people.”
But as achievements will increasingly be measured by legislative action instead of executive order, the degree of difficulty rises. And based upon the paltry proposal advanced by the Office of Management and Budget, Trump is already planning to renege on one of his principal campaign promises: to rebuild the U.S. military.
During the fall campaign, Trump did outline an ambitious set of goals for the armed forces: expand the size of the active-duty Army from a planned 460,000 to 540,000, the Navy from just over 270 to 350 warships, the Marine Corps from 24 to 36 battalions, and the Air Force to 1,200 fighter aircraft. And since the election, he has spoken repeatedly about the need to modernize the aging U.S. nuclear triad of bombers, ballistic missile submarines, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Speaking to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, the president vowed “one of the greatest military buildups in history.” And addressing a joint session of Congress—in the most statesmanlike performance of his political career—he declared he was “sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
If only. The OMB defense budget target for 2018 is from the Land of Alternative Facts. At $603 billion, it’s just 3 percent above the level anticipated in President Obama’s final budget, well below the $640 billion recommended jointly by the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Rep. Mac Thornberry and Sen. John McCain, and about $60 billion below the top-line recommended by the bipartisan National Defense Panel in 2014. In fact, the added monies proposed by the Trump White House will not even suffice to meet the nearly $60 billion hole in the readiness and maintenance accounts facing the services right now.
The White House has also been conducting a disinformation campaign in concert with the OMB announcement, claiming that the administration’s proposal represents a 10-percent, $54 billion increase. But that is to measure the Trump budget by the spending limits set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, not by enacted budgets or Pentagon plans, let alone military necessity.
Indeed, it would appear that the architect of Trump’s supposed rebuilding plan is neither Defense Secretary James Mattis nor the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but OMB director Mick Mulvaney. Until plucked from the House of Representatives to run the budget agency, Mulvaney was among the hardest of hardcore budget hawks, a man who believes that the supplemental appropriations needed to sustain military operations in wartime are little more than a “slush fund.” Moreover, Mulvaney was only able to add monies to defense that he could take out of domestic and international programs.
The good news is that Trump’s first budget is dead before arrival on Capitol Hill—there is thus an opportunity for Congress to fill the vacuum Mulvaney has created. In particular, this is an opportunity for McCain and Thornberry to maximize the leverage that comes from narrow Republican majorities. If they are tough and clever, it should be easy to peel off a respectable number of Democrats, no matter how strongly their party is committed to “resistance.” McCain greeted the OMB defense number with disdain: “With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obama’s budget,” he said, adding, “We can and must do better.” Thornberry said much the same.
It is striking that in a speech meant to convey the issues and problems confronting the nation, the president had nothing to say about the threats posed by the likes of North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. If the country were dealing only with ISIS, perhaps the Trump “build-up” would be enough, but of course that isn’t the case at all.
Trump intended his speech to Congress to be aspirational, encouraging the country to “think big” in seeking solutions to our problems. But in tackling a problem he has long emphasized—the “lost generation” of American military power—the president has allowed his ambition to be focused through the narrow eyes of his budget director. The accountant has trumped the developer; the golf resort has been scaled back to putt-putt dimensions.
