President Trump Calls for an Increase in Military Spending in First Budget

By Neil A. Carousso

The White House announced Monday morning that President Donald J. Trump’s upcoming budget will ask for a $54 billion increase in the defense budget.

“This will be a public safety and national security budget,” said President Trump at the National Governors Association Meeting at the White House. “It will include a historic increase in defense spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America at a time when we most need it.”

Currently, half of the U.S. Navy F-18 Hornets cannot take to the skies, and up to 75 percent of U.S. Marine Corps jets are grounded.

About half of United States Air Force B-1 bombers are out-of-service as it awaits spare parts. Many U.S. military jets have flown well past its expected lives. There is a shortage of spare parts and manufacturers do not make many of the military’s parts necessities.

President Trump has vowed to update the military’s dilapidated equipment, much to the appreciation of military brass who have been sounding the alarm under the Obama Administration and drafting expansion plans that would best serve the country’s defense needs.

The Commander-In-Chief has also promised to end the defense sequester, a provision of the Budget Control Act of 2011 that “imposes across-the-board spending cuts if Congress and The White House cannot agree on more targeted cuts aimed at reducing the budget deficit,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The DOD and military leaders said last March that “sequestration poses the biggest threat to readiness.”President Barack Obama proposed a $582.7 billion budget in February 2016. The defense budget is currently about $610 billion which is not nearly enough with depleted military equipment and rising daily threats of radical Islamic terrorism and other domestic terror threats, according to military personnel. 

The new leadership at The Pentagon under President Trump’s DOD Secretary General James Mattis issued budget guidance earlier this month with three major points to accomplish: improving “warfighting readiness, to achieve program balance by addressing shortfalls, and to build ‘a larger, more capable, and more lethal joint force.'” The Commander-In-Chief has echoed President Ronald Reagan’s mantra of “peace through strength.”

Featured Image: Getty Images.