4um: Trump's 'historic' military buildup vision has a money problem

In February, President Trump told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference that his administration was working on a "massive" defense budget request.

"Offensive, defensive, everything. Bigger and better and stronger than ever before," the president said. "It will be one of the greatest military buildups in American history."

When the White House unveils the president's full 2018 defense budget on Tuesday, lawmakers, experts and industry will finally get to see how far it will move the country toward the much bigger military promised by Trump. That military would have about 75 more Navy ships, 65,000 more soldiers, hundreds more Air Force tactical aircraft and more Marine Corps battalions.

The administration hemmed itself in when it announced in March that total national defense baseline spending would be $603 billion, part of what the Office of Management and Budget said was an effort to rebuild the military while also not increasing public debt. It includes deep cuts to non-defense programs to offset the defense costs. The $603 billion includes $574 billion in base Defense Department spending and $29 billion for "other" national defense, including nuclear-related activities in the Energy Department.

On top of that, the administration proposes $65 billion for overseas contingency operations, for a total national defense spending bill of $668 billion. Overseas account funding is not subject to Budget Control Act spending caps, however, so most of the focus is on the $603 billion in baseline funding.

"The budget outline that [the Office of Management and Budget] released … is not enough to keep the promises the president has made to fix our military and to expand," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who has challenged Trump's plans as too frugal.

Trump's $603 billion baseline national defense budget is about $18.5 billion — or about 3 percent — more than the amount projected by the Obama administration, said Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The administration prefers to call it a historic $54 billion increase ranking near a Reagan administration buildup in the 1980s and spending during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But the claim of a $54 billion hike is based on a spending cap set by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The cap is set to kick in for 2018, adding another potential hurdle to Trump's defense plans, but Congress has voted to raise BCA spending levels for the past four years.

"The historic characterization of it is largely marketing smoke and mirrors," Blakeley said.

About $36 billion of the $54 billion will go to military priorities that were already penciled in from last year's Obama administration budget, she said.

Meanwhile, Trump could be left with the remaining $18.5 billion in extra funding to pay for a touted buildup that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years.

"Can the administration pull a rabbit out of a hat?" Blakeley said. "At $603 billion, that's actually not a lot of real money over and above the president's budget plan from last year."

The White House budget release Tuesday will show what new choices Trump has made, among the many competing military needs, with the money available.

The added funding could be poured into boosting troop numbers and ramping up key procurement programs, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, said Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation.

The administration was planning fighter and ship purchases that closely mirror the projections made under the Obama administration, anonymous officials told Bloomberg last week. It may add one Navy destroyer, making nine warships total, and make no changes to plans for 70 F-35s and 14 Super Hornets.

"Did they buy more end strength, because a lot of people around here think the services have been shrunk too far, or did they invest in more capability like the F-35, a destroyer," he said. "Or did they try to do a hybrid, a mix, a little bit of end strength and a little more capability."

Adding other items such as training and spare parts for aging equipment would likely burn through the increased defense money, Spoehr said.

Thornberry and Sen. John McCain have both called for a $640 billion baseline national defense budget that would pay for an across-the-board buildup, including more submarines, fighter jets, unmanned vehicles and increased research and development, Spoehr said.

"When you get much less than that [$640 billion], your aspirations have to get ratcheted way back, " he said.

Trump's choice to go with a $603 billion defense budget likely stems from OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, a fiscal hawk during his time in the House, and an urge to completely offset the increases to the Defense Department with reductions elsewhere the discretionary budget, such as the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Labor Department.

"$54 billion for those guys is a lot of money," Spoehr said. "So [the administration] probably, I'm guessing, felt like they had gotten about as much as they could in one year out of the other federal agencies."

Once released, Trump's budget plan will be in Congress' hands. Lawmakers will likely debate funding levels for weeks or months.

Military leaders have issued a series of grim warnings that the military has been stretched too thin and underfunded for years. Without more money and resources, they say, the U.S. could be unready to fight a war and troops could unnecessarily die on the battlefield.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, who is Trump's only confirmed service secretary, said the service has serious readiness and equipment modernization problems but acknowledged the upcoming budget might not be a silver bullet solution.

"We're not going to get well in a single year, we know that," Wilson said. "So this is going to be a recovery over a period of time."