WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0The Trump administration’s early budget plans for 2018 are already catching heat on Capitol Hill, from Democrats for domestic cuts and from the Republicans in charge of the armed services committees, who say it shortchanges the military.
“We are taking his words and turning them into policies and dollars,” he said. “It reduces money to other nations, eliminates duplicative programs and eliminates programs that just don’t work.”
The biggest question of all \u2014 how a proposal that guts the non-defense budget would survive on Capitol Hill \u2014 suggests the White House\u00a0has offered an opening negotiation position rather than a viable number. It’s a proposal sure to net a violent reaction from Senate Democrats, who have in recent years asked that defense increases be matched dollar-for-dollar on the non-defense side.
Katherine Blakeley, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says a number of questions need to be addressed before the real details of the budget plan can be assessed. But one thing is clear, she said \u2013 that this plan is designed to be “politically untenable for the Democrats while trying to be as favorable as possible for the Republicans.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or as Benjamin Friedman of the CATO Institute put it, “This plan won’t happen because Democrats will block it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the imposition of the budget caps, Democrats have fought to maintain a one-for-one trade between defense spending and domestic spending. That was easier when they had top cover from President Barack Obama, but could prove more challenging with the Trump White House hammering Democrats for holding down on defense levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congress would not only need to pass a 2018 budget resolution, which could pass with Republican alone, but a new law to raise the caps to allow the White House’s proposal. That would require Democratic votes.
“Republicans need 60 Senate votes to overturn the BCA cap for next year,” Friedman said. “I believe Schumer can keep enough of Democrats in line around the idea that an increase in defense must be matched by an increase in non-defense discretionary to stop this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Instead, he predicts the two parties will settle on a raising of the budget caps for both defense and non-defense spending, with an influx of cash into OCO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blakeley also notes that, by putting its marker for fiscal 2018 down now, the administration is setting up the still-unsettled fiscal 2017 appropriations discussion as a proxy war. The government is currently operating under a continuing resolution to fund the federal government, which expires at the end of April.\u00a0
Because the plans pays for defense increases through the non-defense side and not deficit spending, the proposal\u00a0is a nod at fiscal conservatives in Congress. Mulvaney was one of them before he left Congress to join the White House.
“The important thing to me is this is a clear statement of recognition that we are heading towards a hollow force,” Carafano said. “There’s not just a readiness crisis, there’s enormous modernization challenges, and you have trouble maintaining [operational] tempo. That’s the text book definition of a force that’s heading to hollow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration’s early budget plans are already catching heat on Capitol Hill, from Democrats for domestic cuts and from the Republicans in charge of the armed services committees, who say it shortchanges the military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":113820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[4151,4153],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3288,3216],"class_list":["post-84475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress","category-pentagon"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"GGZAKNFRO5HA3MC7K5Z6DDS6KY","arc_canonical_url":"\/2017\/02\/27\/mccain-thornberry-rip-white-house-budget-plan-on-defense\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n