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1 1 (June 2017)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaaag0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Key Points * President Trump's defense budget would repair, not rebuild, the military. Worse, it lacks the investments necessary to allow a robust rebuilding effort to begin a year from now. The request represents a more muscular status quo at best. This budget continues a favored Washington tradition of investing in the immediate and long term while shortchanging the next three to 15 years. This barbell investment strategy emphasizes the conflicts of today and the wars of the distant future, while discounting the long bar of the medium term, wherein most strategic and military risk lies. * President Trump's overall federal spending blueprint suggests that balancing the budget ranks above rebuilding the military in the administration's list of priorities. This should raise concerns about the president's commitment to rebuilding the military and his ability to deliver the legislative changes Congress will need to do so. It is no secret that President Donald Trump's first defense budget falls short of his own rhetoric. The president's budget (PB) request for fiscal year (FY) 2o18 totals $668 billion: a $603 billion base budget combined with $65 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding. The topline is $33 billion greater than FY2o17 appropriated spending (Table 1) and $18 billion above President Barack Obama's planned FY18 base budget request (Table z).1 This represents a 5.5 percent bump over last year's defense funding and a more modest 3 percent increase over his predecessor's expected base budget. No honest observer would call this a historic increase. Worse, President Trump's budget will not begin to rebuild America's military. To confront rising threats in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, America needs to adopt a three-theater force- sizing construct. This requires robust and balanced investments in the military to replenish the shrinking inventories and aging technologies of a force that can no longer shock and awe its adversaries. In To Rebuild America's Military, American Enterprise Institute scholars demonstrated that such a rebuild could be accomplished through sustained investments in the military of no less than 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).2 By contrast, Trump's first budget request represents only 3.4 percent of next year's projected GDP. Many critics have called out Trump for his underwhelming defense budget. They rightly contend that rebuilding the military requires significantly more funding than the president has requested. In the armed forces, Pentagon leadership has acknowledged that the 2o18 proposal represents a repair budget. They have promised that a genuine rebuild will begin in 2o19, when they aim for a AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

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