The President’s budget is expected on Capitol Hill in just under two weeks. Here are some of the latest details emerging about what to look for in the defense spending request:
- The Army is moving $31 billion to modernization and readiness by cutting from at least 186 other priorities, according to Breaking Defense.
- To skirt defense spending caps, the administration will likely pad the overseas war account, which is exempt from the caps, as On Base has reported. It will set up a clash with Democrats and may split Republicans.
- Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Bloomberg he is fine with the budget tricks if that’s what it takes. “All I care about is the top line,” he said. “Others are more concerned with how things are divided up. All I want is the results.”
- The budget will include the first real details of how a Space Force would be structured within the Air Force and what it would cost. “A couple hundred million is probably all of the additional cost that you would need in that first year,” Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in the Bloomberg article.