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The $640 billion plan, which McCain outlined in a white paper Monday, would be $90 billion more than the fiscal 2017 funding level, $55 billion more than what President Obama requested for fiscal 2018 in last year's budget and $7 billion more than the last pre-sequestration budget produced under Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted for fiscal 2018, according to Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War, the United States once again faces the need to prepare for great power competition and confrontation. Russian aggression along the eastern front of NATO presents military challenges to European security not seen in decades. China’s military modernization and coercive behavior toward U.S. allies and partners threaten stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Both nations are disrupting an international order that has long provided relative peace and prosperity for the United States, its allies and partners, and much of the rest of the world.
The 2017 fiscal year once again began with an interim continuing resolution—the eighth year in a row that Congress has failed to pass a budget for the federal government by the start of the new fiscal year. This continuing resolution maintains the 2016 levels of funding for the Department of Defense (DoD) until December 9, 2016. With the Republicans maintaining control of the House and Senate and taking the White House, increases in defense spending would likely appear sometime after the new Congress and President take office in January. DoD might have a fiscal year (FY) 2017 spending bill in February or March if the defense hawks and the deficit hawks within the Republican caucus can come to terms.
