Aggression from Russia and other world events are slowly leading some budget-cutting Republicans to see the need in higher defense budgets, the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Wednesday morning at the Heritage Foundation.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said that all of Congress – the Senate and the House, Democrats and Republicans – share some of the blame for the spending caps imposed by sequestration. But, he said, “I have to say, I do think Mr. Putin has helped enlighten some of our Republican colleagues about the reasons that we always put national security first,” he said, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Later in the event, Thornberry elaborated, saying “as I mentioned, I think Mr. Putin and others are helping remind everyone that the world is dangerous and that the first job of the federal government is to defend the country. I think the actual number of isolationists in the Republican Party is very small, and so I have seen a change even in the last year or two towards a greater willingness to look at increased defense spending.
“At the same time, I think it’s really important that we continue to make the kinds of reform efforts that I mentioned to get more out of the money we spend,” he said. “One way we help shore up support for Pentagon spending, not just among Republicans but among everybody, is to make the reforms necessary so that each dollar is spent as wisely as possible and fewer dollars are spent on overhead and unnecessary things.”
Thornberry spearheaded a congressional pursuit of defense acquisition reform, accompanied by a similar undertaking at the Pentagon. He said there was clearly more work to be done in that area, but he said he was encouraged that his effort had become bipartisan and bicameral.
Thornberry, in what was essentially a rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, then faulted the president for both lacking leadership to get the Pentagon out of its funding crisis and for forging and adversarial relationship with Congress instead of a cooperative one.
He noted that the House’s National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 passed overwhelmingly last week, in a 325-98 vote. “Having bipartisan support, of course, the president promptly threatens to veto the bill,” Thornberry said.
The Obama administration threatened to veto the bill due to many provisions, the bulk of which dealt with administration proposals to curb spending in the long run, that the House rejected. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which passed its bill out of the committee last week, also rejected most of these measures, which ranged from retiring aircraft fleets to shedding excess bases and infrastructure to increasing some Tricare co-payments.
Thornberry said Obama had blamed Congress for catering to parochial interests, and the congressman conceded that that was part but not all of the motivation.
“Is that the reason so many members of Congress in both parties have real doubts and concerns about where this administration is taking our country’s security? I don’t think so,” he said. “I disagree with a lot of the president’s proposals really for two reasons. One is, I’m not sure they’re well thought out. Last year they came to us and proposed that we keep the U-2 airplane and retire the Global Hawk. This year’s budget proposal just reversed it and wants to retire the U-2 and keep the Global Hawk. When you flip-flop completely within one year, it doesn’t give you a lot of confidence that these proposals have been well thought out. I know this, if you talk to the commanders in Korea, they want to keep them both, with a volatile young leader who’s in charge in the north.
“The other reason I’m not willing to accept many of the administration’s proposals is that I’m not willing to accept that we have to have a smaller military or a smaller role in the world,” Thornberry said. “Most Republicans and many Democrats are not willing to throw up our hands in retreat and resign ourselves to a smaller military and that smaller role because we know that as the United States retreats, others will fill that void.”