President Donald Trump has promised the U.S. military "beautiful" planes, ships, and equipment, but his $603 billion, 2018 defense budget offers only a modest build-up, experts say.
The budget would boost military and border security spending as it makes deep funding cuts to United States diplomacy and foreign aid that critics say could harm national security. But it does not provide, or even lay the groundwork, for the buildup that Trump promoted during the campaign.
The proposed 2018 defense budget is only about $18.5 billion more than the plan then-President Barack Obama outlined for this fiscal year. That’s simply not enough to rebuild and strengthen the military as Trump has vowed, according to experts.
The request for the increase in defense spending is offset by cuts across many agencies — notably a massive 28 percent reduction for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that would gut their joint budget to $25.6 billion. Foreign assistance and funding for climate change, the United Nations and affiliated agencies, and cultural exchange programs would all be cut significantly.
The president’s budget proposal is unlikely to move forward in Congress, where it has drawn criticism across both sides of the aisle. Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, has called the budget “the latest example of the president breaking his promises to working Americans,” while a statement from Republican Senator John McCain observed on Tuesday that the proposed defense increases come as “part of an overall budget that is dead on arrival.”
Concerning defense spending, the budget is focused not on the big-ticket “beautiful” items Trump has highlighted in speeches, but instead on needed — although less flashy — elements, such as rebuilding readiness, buying more munitions, and providing facilities maintenance.
“$18.5 billion just doesn’t go that far, particularly if you are going to take real action to address some of the force structure and readiness issues that we’ve been struggling with for the past several years,” Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said. “You can burn though $18.5 billion, which I don’t think we’re necessarily going to get, very rapidly.”
“The defense buildup is only going to be about $18 billion a year, half of which is going to be eaten up by must-pay bills,” Mark Cancian, senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program, said. “It’s going to be much, much smaller than anticipated.”
The president told Congress in February that his budget “calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” While experts say that Trump’s request would be an increase, his claims do not hold up.
“This is not a historic increase,” Blakeley said, noting past buildups under President Jimmy Carter, President Ronald Reagan, and President George W. Bush, respectively, that were more significant than Trump’s proposal.
After the election, Cancian said, there was “this euphoria” in the defense community that the “good times were coming back” under Trump. But a “certain disillusionment, or more limited expectations, at least, have grown up in the last few months,” he said.
In a February speech at MacDill Air Force Base, Trump told hundreds of troops that “we’re going to be loading it up with beautiful new planes and beautiful new equipment.”
“You’ve been lacking a little equipment. We’re going to load it up. You’re going to get a lot of equipment. Believe me,” he said.
Now, Cancian said, “people recognize this is not going to be a Reaganesque buildup, but something much more modest.”
Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services chair Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his House counterpart Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) are pushing for a $640 billion defense budget, a much higher increase than Trump’s proposed topline of $603 billion.
Replying to the budget release on Tuesday, McCain issued a statement saying that the “defense budget request is inadequate to the challenges we face” and “illegal under current law.”
Before President Barack Obama left office, he proposed a boosted 2018 defense budget. Trump’s request represents a 3 percent increase, or $18.5 billion above the level the Obama administration proposed for FY 2018.
In a September speech on boosting the military, Trump called for specific long-term goals: a regular Army of 540,000 soldiers, a 350 ship Navy, an Air Force of “at least 1,200 fighter aircraft,” a Marine Corps of 36 battalions, and a “state of the art missile defense system.”
To buy the force Trump described in September, it would cost in the ballpark of about $80 billion a year above what Obama outlined, according to Cancian’s analysis. “Trump is allocating only about 18 billion above that,” he noted.
As Blakeley said, “in terms of the campaign promises, this is largely going to be a paper buildup right now. We’re not going to see a lot it realized or a lot of it be able to be realized.”
For instance, the Navy is seeking a 355-ship Navy, up from today’s 275-ship fleet and slightly more than Trump’s target of 350-ships. But the Trump administration budget does not accelerate the shipbuilding pace the Navy would need to achieve such a goal.
“You can’t build a 350-ship Navy with that money,” Cancian said. “You can build a 305-ship Navy.”
A Congressional Budget Office report in April found that to establish a 355-ship fleet, the Navy needs to buy approximately 329 new ships over 30 years — and over the next five years, the Navy would need to purchase about 12 ships per year. The Trump budget only calls for buying eight ships in the coming year.
And as for the aircraft programs that Trump has publicly highlighted for changes, the budget proposal does not differ from Obama’s request for 70 F-35s and 14 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
Trump’s proposal must be put in the context of the defense caps set up by the Budget Control Act (BCA). Sequestration makes broad, automatic, across-the-board cuts if the caps are exceeded. The limit for FY 2018 is set at $549 billion for defense, not including war spending, which the proposal obviously tops. It would require 60 votes in the Senate — something that may be politically impossible — to repeal the BCA.
“To look to the 2018 budget submission to even have the normal level of political discourse or political give and take, that would be a wildly optimistic scenario for this year,” Blakeley added.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis earlier this year released budget guidance that set the 2018 budget priorities as improving current readiness and filling shortfalls. But “the ultimate objective is to build a larger, more capable, and more lethal joint force, driven by a new National Defense Strategy,” he wrote.
The Pentagon is currently working on the strategy, which is due later this year, and that is expected to be incorporated into the FY 2019 budget. It marks Mattis’ “best opportunity to make a strong, well thought-out case” regarding a long-term plan for significant military expansion, Blakeley said, but it also means “punting the prospective big buildup” into next year.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge contributed to this story.
