President Trump is calling to increase defense spending by $54 billion, which could mean a big boost for Virginia’s economy. But, Matt Laslo reports from Washington that not all of the state’s lawmakers are on board.
President Trump vowed to drastically increase the Pentagon's budget, so while his request for an additional $54 billion may seem large, defense hawks point out it's only a 3% increase over last year. Virginia Republican Rob Wittman, though, says he sees that number just as a start.
“Well, the increase in the base budget is good but it’s still short of what we need to do to really reestablish our readiness, to catch up on training, to modernize our forces, so I want to look at it positively but we’re going to have to have the debate about what we do in addition.”
The ball is now in Congress' court and that gives Wittman, who is on the Armed Services Committee, power.
Wittman says he plans to use that power to amp up the Navy's fleet.
“On Seapower, we’re going to layout the payoff on how we rebuild the Navy to 355 ships. The good news is we have mature designs and hot production lines where we don’t have to worry about creating new classes of ships. I think we can really kick this thing into gear.”
Wittman says it’s not just Virginia’s ship building industry that stands to benefit if Congress can increase defense spending. He says military installations and contractors across the Commonwealth have been calling for this budget increase for years.
“The other companies that are located in Virginia that build aircraft, that build defense-related systems, that do much of the work to help and the planning and research and testing and development of these systems are located in Virginia so Virginia will definitely be a partner in this.”
But Democrats aren’t too keen on the president’s proposal because it pays for the military buildup by cutting school lunch programs, housing assistance and even efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Senator Tim Kaine says that would hurt the Commonwealth’s economy more than defense spending would help it.
“It’s going to be very devastating if what we hear is right, that the 54 billion is largely going to be paid for by cuts out of the non-defense discretionary, that would be very, very harmful to Virginia.”
Kaine adds that those cuts on the non-Pentagon side of the ledger would also be harmful to national defense.
“Because an awful lot of the non-defense discretionary accounts are directly related to national security, whether it’s State Department, the reactor program in the Department of Energy, the FBI, DEA, there’s just so much of the non-defense discretionary that’s connected to national security and safety. So it could be very harmful for Virginia.”
One of Virginia’s freshmen Congressman, Scott Taylor, is a former Navy Seal. He says he doesn’t want to just see military spending increased – he also wants it revamped. He says the Pentagon is currently wasting money on new items.
“The president actually personally got involved in, in one of them, the F-35, reducing it by hundreds of millions of dollars. I think while we plus up military spending, while we deal with sequestration, and getting our national security apparatus back where it needs to be, we also need to look at a microscope at things that are wasteful.”
Taylor also says he wants to look at the Pentagon’s books to make sure officials aren’t wasting money that can help his fellow troops.
“Should we audit the Pentagon and where things go? Yeah, damn right. Of course. I think people, taxpayers have a right to understand where their money is going. Certainly congress of course is supposed to oversee this.”
The president’s budget is just an opening negotiation with Congress, and more details are expected in the coming weeks.