Congress is starting to pursue President Donald Trump’s plan to end defense budget caps and increase military spending.
Rep. Mike Turner is trying to gain support to end military spending caps — known as “sequestration” — to allow Trump’s administration to fund the military without budget restrictions.
“It is my effort to reach a majority of support for this letter and to have the confidence of the House to fully repeal sequestration for our national defense,” Turner said in a press release Tuesday.
“This letter shows strong support from Members who are pledging to vote to repeal sequestration. I have been approached by numerous colleagues asking to sign on to this letter and I look forward to gaining continued support throughout this process. The President has repeatedly called for an end to sequestration.”
Sequestration, part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, limited the Department of Defense’s operational, non-combat spending throughout the recession, and only Congress can remove the budget caps. “President Trump will end the defense sequester and submit a new budget to Congress outlining a plan to rebuild our military,” according to the White House.
“As President Trump begins to prepare his budget request for Fiscal Year 2018, it is imperative that we provide him with the ability to fully fund national defense,” Turner’s letter says. “We must afford our President the ability to restore military readiness and provide him with the necessary tools to protect our interests at home and abroad.”
Turner says sequestration “diminishes our military’s readiness, impedes our ability to deter adversaries effectively, and ravages our defense communities across the country.”
“President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to ‘fully eliminate the defense sequester’ and ‘submit a new budget to rebuild our military,'” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said in a white paper last week. “This cannot happen soon enough. The damage that has been done to our military over the past eight years will not be reversed in one year.”
Defense contractors in Dayton, Ohio, which is within the district Turner represents, were awarded more than $11 billion in Pentagon contracts between 2010 and 2015.
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