Source: United States Senator for Oklahoma James Inhofe
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today criticized the Biden administration’s fiscal year 2022 budget request for the U.S. Army, which is $4 billion below last year and jeopardizes progress on the Army’s readiness and modernization priorities.
Witnesses include: Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and General James McConville, Army Chief of Staff.
As Prepared for Delivery:
Thank you, Chairman Reed.
Ms. Wormuth, General McConville, thank you for being here today, and thank you for your decades of distinguished service to our nation.
I also want to highlight that yesterday was the Army’s birthday…honoring 246 years of unparalleled service and sacrifice to the nation by the senior military service.
I imagine it would have been a happier birthday had the Army fared better in the President’s fiscal year 2022 budget request.
As I have often said, the world is more dangerous now than any other period of my lifetime. Since we released the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the threats have only gotten worse.
We face a wide range of adversaries, the most dangerous of which are an increasingly aggressive China and belligerent Russia. At the same time, we must contend with rogue nations like Iran and North Korea, as well as violent extremist organizations.
Our strategic competitors have gone to school on the American way of war, and they are rapidly modernizing their militaries to exploit our vulnerabilities.
China and Russia combined are spending more to modernize their militaries than we are.
This request is a cut to defense, and the Army is bearing the brunt of it. This seems to be the case every time an Administration tries to cut defense.
And yet, every time we cut the Army, we end up reversing those cuts soon after. It’s a shortsighted approach that fails to recognize the strategic value the Army provides.
With this budget, the Army’s topline decreases by $4 billion from the previous year, putting at risk the gains in readiness made after we hit rock bottom in 2017.
Procurement funding decreases $4.2 billion—a debilitating 11 percent cut—and Military Construction is cut by 15 percent.
As we watch our strategic competitors make unprecedented investments in modernization, cuts like this just don’t make sense.
I look forward to understanding from our witnesses the impact of these cuts on the readiness and modernization of the Army, and how it could risk the Army’s ability to accomplish assigned tasks from the National Defense Strategy. Mr. Chairman.