The president had previously called for a cut in defense spending.
By WESLEY MORGAN, Politico
President Donald Trump has told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to submit a $750 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2020, in a reversal from his pledge to trim defense spending, two people familiar with the budget negotiations have told POLITICO.
The $750 billion figure emerged from a meeting Tuesday at the White House among Trump, Mattis and the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, both people said.
That would dwarf the $733 billion budget proposal Mattis and other top military leaders have been fighting to preserve and would represent a stunning about-face for a president who recently called the fiscal 2019 top line of $716 billion for defense spending “crazy.” In October, Trump said the defense figure for 2020 would be $700 billion, a roughly 5 percent cut in line with decreases planned for other agencies.
Mattis and top military officials, including Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and the generals nominated to head two key four-star commands, have publicly pushed back hard against a cut to $700 billion, and their counteroffensive seems to have succeeded. POLITICO reported Saturday that Pentagon officials recently scrapped the $700 billion proposal they had been working on to meet the 5 percent cuts and have reverted to working on a $733 billion proposal that top generals have said is their preferred, “strategy-driven” figure.
Trump suggested the new $750 billion number during the Tuesday meeting as a “negotiating tactic” to ensure that Democratic opposition does not push the eventual defense budget below the $733 billion that Mattis, Inhofe and Thornberry were pursuing, said the second source, a former administration official with knowledge of the meeting and the current budget negotiations.
The budget number represents all national defense spending, including the Pentagon and Department of Energy funding for the nuclear arsenal. Defense funding is still subject to Budget Control Act spending caps, so lawmakers would need to agree to a deal to lift the caps before the Defense Department could realize this new increase.
The new $750 billion figure is not yet official and will likely be announced this week, the current administration official said, and the former administration official added that both the Pentagon and OMB are still moving forward on the $733 billion proposal.
“There was a discussion with POTUS about how to get $733 billion, and POTUS suggested that if the position is $733 billion, then we should submit a budget at $750 billion as a negotiating tactic,” the second source said. “That said, the president changes his mind constantly.”
In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Andrews said Sunday that the Pentagon is still “working with OMB to determine the department’s top line budget number.”
