Trump’s defense budget request “is playing fourth fiddle to tax cuts, cutting non-defense discretionary by 30 percent over a decade to a record low of 1.4 percent of” gross domestic product “and balancing the federal budget within 10 years,” Katherine Blakeley, a defense budget analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wrote in a new report.
Instead of formally proposing legislation to repeal the budget caps, the Trump budget calls for extending caps for six years through 2027 while giving national security programs a pass to increase spending 2 percent annually, for an additional $489 billion, Blakeley wrote.
“It offsets these raises with $1.6 trillion of deep cuts to non-defense discretionary spending that are unlikely to be enacted” as “many of these cuts have drawn criticism from conservative Republicans,” she wrote.
“The wide gulfs between the political parties, and between the defense hawks and the fiscal hawks, will not be closed soon,” Blakeley wrote.