Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees responsible for annual defense authorization have voiced opposition to the White House’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal for differing reasons, raising questions about whether Congress will be able to agree on defense spending levels past the end of this fiscal year.
While the committees’ Republicans argue that the White House’s proposed defense funding is inadequate for the military’s needs, Democrats are criticizing non-defense spending cuts in the administration’s proposal, which was released in full last week.
HASC Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) was the latest voice against the proposal, arguing in a Wednesday statement that the White House budget would “pour taxpayer dollars into an unnecessary and impractical $1.2 trillion effort to improve and sustain more than 4,000 nuclear weapons.”
Smith highlighted the White House’s proposed increase to the Energy Department’s nuclear modernization budget and the Air Force’s upgrades to its two legs of the nuclear triad as areas of wasteful spending.
The budget proposal would add $1 billion to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s funding, bringing it to $13.9 billion – of which $10.2 billion would go toward the agency’s nuclear weapons activities, namely its warhead life-extension programs; research, development, test, and evaluation in support of the stockpile; and infrastructure projects.
The proposal would also ramp up the Air Force’s funding for Long-Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile development, granting it $451 million – a significant increase from the $95.6 million it currently receives – for the program’s advanced development phase. The budget would also give the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program $216 million in fiscal 2018, up from the current $114 million.
“Many of these requests should have been delayed until the administration completes a Nuclear Posture Review to determine how many and what kind of nuclear weapons we need,” Smith said in his statement. Other Democrats on the committee condemned the president’s budget proposal specifically for its proposed cuts to non-defense spending.
“Thankfully, every president’s budget is nothing more than a glorified wish list,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said in a statement last week. “I am especially happy this one is dead on arrival.”
Meanwhile, HASC chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) said last week the White House’s budget proposal is actually “not enough to do what the President said he wants to do,” arguing that the president’s request for $603 billion in defense spending falls short of the $640 billion necessary “to begin repairing and rebuilding our military.”
Other Republicans on the committee have agreed with Thornberry, saying last week that the president’s budget is not enough to improve military capabilities and readiness. Meanwhile, SASC Democrats raised similar objections to the bill, while chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the budget request “inadequate to the challenges we face, illegal under current law, and part of an overall budget proposal that is dead on arrival in Congress.”
An aide on Capitol Hill recently confirmed that members of Congress acknowledge the president’s budget as “just a proposal,” and that authorizers and appropriators will themselves consider all program and funding options for their budgets.