Lawrence J. Korb: Trump’s defense budget

  Since coming into office a little more than a year ago, the Trump administration—with help from the Republican-controlled Congress—has added more than $200 billion to the projected levels of defense spending for fiscal years 2017 through 2019. Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump added $15 billion to former President Barack Obama’s FY 2017 budget, and he proposed an FY 2018 budget of $639 billion. This represented an increase of $56 billion, or 10 percent, over the proposed FY 2017 budget.

  As part of the recent deal to keep the government open, Congress agreed to increase the FY 2018 defense budget to $700 billion—an increase of $108 billion, or 18 percent, above the proposed 2017 budget—and the FY 2019 budget to $716 billion. This means that since Trump took office, the defense budget will have grown by $133 billion, or 23 percent.

Trump’s proposed defense budget will not support U.S. national security

  Released in May, President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2018 defense budget increases funding for the U.S. Department of Defense while cutting funding for other critical programs in the discretionary budget. In analyzing whether the proposed budget truly enhances national security, however, it is important to keep the following three ideas in mind.