President Joe Biden is expected to ask Congress for more than $770 billion for his US defense budget for the next fiscal year as the Pentagon seeks to modernize the military, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations, eclipsing the record budget requests by former President Donald Trump.
Ongoing budget talks between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have coalesced around a proposed national defense request of higher than $770 billion for the 2023 fiscal year starting Oct. 1, the sources said.
Negotiations are ongoing within the administration and the final amount could change before the budget request is made in the coming months, the sources added. The Pentagon referred queries to the OMB, which declined to comment.
After months of debate and weeks of angst, the Senate on Wednesday voted 88-11 to finalize plans for a $740 billion authorization bill for the Department of Defense, sending the sweeping military policy measure to the White House for the 61st consecutive year.
The move codifies the annual 2.7% pay raise for troops in 2022, backs $25 billion more in military spending for fiscal 2022 than the White House requested and overhauls how certain sexual misconduct crimes are prosecuted under military rules.
But what the bill doesn’t include has gotten more attention than what it does
To speed up passage, congressional leaders dropped language to add women to the Selective Service System for potential future conscription, scaled back plans for even more dramatic military justice changes and dumped several other provisions.
Completion of the bill — considered “must pass” legislation by congressional leaders each year because of the hundreds of reauthorization and policy reforms it includes — appeared in doubt as recently as two weeks ago, when Senate lawmakers still had not completed preliminary work usually done in late summer.
That prompted House and Senate Armed Services Committee leaders to ditch the typical conference and amendment process in favor of a simplified compromise bill, frustrating lawmakers from both parties.
But both Republican and Democratic leaders praised the final product as providing key support for the military in an uncertain global environment.
“It addresses a broad range of pressing issues, from strategic competition with China and Russia, to disruptive technologies like hypersonics, [artificial intelligence], and quantum computing, to modernizing our ships, aircraft, and vehicles,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., said.
“It provides our forces with the resources and support they need to defend our nation, makes historic reforms to help improve the lives of our service members, and takes important steps to care for their families.”
“While the process has been imperfect, I’m glad that bipartisan work has produced a bill that authorizes an increase in top-line funding for our national defense,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of a procedural vote Tuesday.
President Joe Biden has signaled he will sign the measure into law in coming days.
Lawmakers’ biggest addition to the defense bill in recent months was arguably the $25 billion in additional military spending.
White House officials and House progressives complained in recent months the money was unnecessary, given significant defense funding plus-ups over the past four years under former President Donald Trump.
But the extra funding found bipartisan backing in both chambers, with supporters pointing to military build-ups by Russia and China. Moderate Democrats said the money was needed to boost research and development spending, and future budget plans from Biden should follow suit.
“We’ve lost a lot of ground to the Chinese while we’ve been focused over the last 20 years on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and they’ve caught up in [artificial intelligence], machine learning, hypersonics and a lot of other things,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s panel on emerging threats.
“It’s important to me that we can regain the ground we’ve lost and make sure the Defense Department is well manned and well equipped.”
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., echoed that sentiment in a floor speech Tuesday.
“The Biden administration originally proposed a top-line defense spending increase … that would not have kept pace with inflation even in a normal year,” she said. “But in a year when it is threatening to spiral out of control, it would have meant an unacceptable cut in resources for our military.
“[This bill] offers an increase of $25 billion on top of President Biden’s proposal, and we came together across party lines to agree to that because it is what our military needs.”