President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal adds a 10 percent increase to defense spending, but that might not be enough for him to rebuild the military.
The proposal, titled “American First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” was described as a “hard power budget” by Mick Mulvaney, the administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. Trump lauded the proposal on Twitter Thursday, claiming it puts safety first. But the proposed defense spending increase, which totals about $54 billion, might not be as significant as it seems.
“The White House’s budget plugs holes and fills gaps in readiness, but it does not begin to rebuild the military,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in defense issues, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
To actually add more ships, planes, and other weapons platforms to the military, Eaglen said the president would have to double the $54 million increase. Trump promised during his campaign that he would rebuild America’s aging military by increasing force sizes across the board, but he may have to prioritize fixing what already exists.
The Vice Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Congress in February that military readiness is currently at a dangerously low level in every service branch, meaning both Congress and the White House may be forced to prioritize that crisis before starting a massive build-up.
Additionally, the 10 percent increase may not be as significant as it seems. The administration based that increase off the number prescribed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which, as Eaglen put it, was practically taken out of thin air with little analysis behind it. This is why some defense hawks, such as Sen. John McCain, claim it is actually a 3 percent increase.
“Trump says 10 percent, but McCain says three percent, and they are both right,” Eaglen told TheDCNF.
This is because they are using different numbers as the baseline. McCain is basing his number off what former President Barack Obama said he would have liked to seen in the 2018 budget, which was also above the cap. At the time, Obama had no explanation as to how he would make up the difference, so the White House could just as easily claim that number is inaccurate as well. Regardless, the increase is not enough to make a significant increase in the military’s numbers.
“Placed in context, President Trump’s defense increase is looking smaller by the hour. Most of the money will go to plugging readiness gaps, but that will lead to an imbalanced force,” wrote Eaglen, in a piece for the National Interest.
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