"The wide gulfs between the political parties and between the defense hawks and the fiscal hawks will not be closed soon," wrote Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
President Trump has proposed a $54 billion increase in defense spending for 2018, but deep divisions on Capitol Hill are making any significant hike uncertain, according to Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
First, a new Pentagon budget is likely to be delayed for months as Congress appears poised to pass another stop-gap budget called a continuing resolution at the start of the new fiscal year in October, Blakeley wrote in an analysis released Monday.
"Congress' window for funding defense — and the rest of the government — before the end of the 2017 fiscal year is short and closing fast," she wrote.