
The chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) on Tuesday pushed back on calls from progressive lawmakers to cut Pentagon spending, a day ahead of the panel’s markup of the next defense policy bill that will include considering a $25 billion topline boost. “A lot of people who criticize how much money we spend on defense talk about other priorities,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said during a Brookings Institution discussion. “I don’t have an enormous amount of sympathy for…