The now ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has signalled his support for a $750 billion topline for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2020 budget request, one of the highest estimates to emerge in recent reports.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), who chaired HASC from 2014 until the Democrats took back the House earlier this month, said the 750 number was “reasonable” to keep the Defense Department funded while accounting for growth during a Jan. 8 meeting with reporters on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), House Armed Services Committee chairman, speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2015. Photo: CSIS

“If the president’s budget is 750, it will be just about a 3 percent real growth – it’s not quite, but it’s nearly the minimum of what the testimony says you need just to keep even,” he said. “I’d like to do more, but if that’s the way it comes over, I think it’s reasonable.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has also made the point that at least 3 percent growth is required to keep the Pentagon funded at current levels.

The Defense Department has reportedly worked on a number of different toplines for their FY ’20 budget request, anticipated to be released Feb. 8. Defense officials were planning to submit a $733 billion budget when President Trump in October called for a 5 percent budget decrease for all cabinets, prompting analysts to wonder whether a $700 billion budget was imminent. The Pentagon’s FY ’19 appropriated budget was roughly $716 billion.

In December, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord told reporters that the department was working on one sole budget topline (Defense Daily, Dec.17).

Thornberry on Tuesday outlined the Defense Department’s need to keep up with peer adversaries on advanced technologies like hypersonics and artificial intelligence, along with maintaining its counterterrorism requirements and combating threats from countries like North Korea and Iran.

He noted that he has had “a number of meetings” over the past two years at the White House regarding the defense budget, and he expects that dialogue to continue.

Thornberry anticipates continuing his bipartisan relationship with new HASC Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on various DoD-related efforts including acquisition reform, he added.

“Adam and I have had a good working relationship over the past four years, and I have every expectation that he will be a good and fair chairman and will continue the bipartisan approach … which with our committee has operated,” he said.

As the partial government shutdown reaches day 18 amid unsuccessful negotiations for border wall funding, Trump has floated the possibility of using military construction funds to build a barrier along the U.S. southern border. Thornberry said that while an authority does exist for the president to use unobligated MILCON funds for such reasons, he personally did not support using DoD funds for “non-defense purposes.”

As the defense budget was cut during sequestration, military construction funds were “devastated,” he noted. “As much as we have done the last two years, we have not made up for that deficit in military construction.”

“To take some of that money and use it for something other than MILCON will obviously be damaging, and I am not for that,” he added. “Seems to me we ought to fund border security needs on their own and take them from other accounts.”