Federal budget fight imperils military spending

WASHINGTON - One of President Donald Trump's biggest goals this year is a huge boost in military funding. He'll probably get more when Congress votes this week on a bill to keep the government running, but nowhere near what he's seeking.

Congress has until Friday to approve a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. To get anything passed, Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, will need Democratic support, and Democrats are reluctant to give Trump what he wants.

The White House last month asked Congress for funding that would go toward 'urgent war-fighting readiness needs,” to address shortfalls for troops' training, equipment, munitions and modernization. That request includes $13.5 billion to build and modernize additional Army Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, F-35 and F/A-18 fighter jets, tactical missiles and unmanned aircraft.

Lawmakers are hoping to finish writing a spending bill as soon as Monday. They still have several potential disagreements to resolve, notably funding for retired coal miners' benefits and aid to Puerto Rico.

And they're considering a deal that could include far less in increased military funding, which alarms many Republicans and Pentagon officials.

'There is no enemy on the planet that can do more damage to the United States Air Force than us not getting a budget,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said at a defense conference in February. He said it would be 'professional malpractice.”

Many lawmakers are also unhappy with the military spending level.

'I am concerned where we are going with the military,” said Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, who has voted against continuing resolutions, as such short-term budget measures are called, in the past. 'I represent Fort Hood, and we'll see what is the long-term plan for the military. I want to get them out of sequestration and get them on the budget and that sort of thing.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has also been critical. 'Our uniformed military leaders have testified that years of budget cuts have placed the lives of military service members at greater risk,” he said.

Republicans have complained about a series of automatic spending cuts that affects defense and non-defense spending equally for years, and Defense Secretary James Mattis lamented the cuts during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in March.

'The last six years of sequester's effects, budget cuts and repeated continuing resolutions have damaged our readiness to a degree that will take time to recover,” Mattis said.

But eliminating the defense spending caps is nearly impossible for Congress this year, said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

'It would seem to me that there's no plausible deal that completely gets rid of caps,” Kogan said.

Williams, a fiscal conservative, has voted against the stopgap spending measures in the past because they increase budget deficits.

Stopgaps, he said, 'are not the way to do business.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said Friday that Democrats were unlikely to support Trump's budget priorities in a 2017 bill because they had not been debated in Congress.

'I think that's going to be the discussion, is how much are we trying to put in here that really isn't about this budget but is actually about the next budget,” she said.

Trump released his budget proposal for 2018 in March and would boost military spending by $54 billion, a nearly 10 percent increase over President Barack Obama's budget for the 2017 fiscal year, by cutting roughly the same amount from non-defense programs.

'It's dead on arrival. It's simply not going to happen,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

'What has been proposed is absolutely and completely unrealistic,” he said. 'The amount in (Trump's) request is perfectly reasonable; it's not much more than what Obama proposed. What is unrealistic is that it's paid for by the non-defense budget.”