Source: United States Senator for Oklahoma James Inhofe
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today reiterated the need for defense budget that provides 5 percent real growth above current levels at a hearing to review the Fiscal Year 2023 budget request for the Department of Defense.
Witnesses included: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley; and Michael McCord, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller).
As Delivered:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, and I join you in welcoming the witnesses. For four years, this committee has been using this 2018 document, the National Defense Strategy [(NDS0] Commission [Report], and I don’t recall ever having one document hang around for so long with so many — the 12 who got involved with this to start with did a good job in putting those forward.
Last week, we received the classified version of the Biden administration’s new NDS – that’s this. From what I’ve seen so far, the new strategy document does a good job expanding our understanding of the scale and the scope of the threat from the Chinese Communist Party and its military modernization. There are some things that we’ll probably have disagreement about. We have done that in the past, but we continue to consider the new strategy. For example, there may be some areas of strategy that the administration is willing to take risk and the Congress may or may not agree. That is clear, and I really can’t stress this enough: the Chinese threat is beyond anything that we have dealt with before in our lives.
General Milley, last year you told us that the Chinese and the Russians combined spend more than us on national defense. This year, Beijing announced an additional 7.1 percent increase in their defense budget. This is a scary thing. This is a big deal.
Mr. Secretary, I do appreciate that — based on the new NDS — that you went to the White House to ask for more resources, and I appreciate that very much. But, even then, the budget just doesn’t rise to the moment. It doesn’t deliver the real growth our military needs. And it says very clearly in this document — in the very beginning of the document — the 3 percent to 5 percent range is where we need to be, and that real growth recommendation comes from the bipartisan commission.
The budget also doesn’t reckon with the record-high inflation we’re seeing today in the realm of 7 to 8 percent. On a bipartisan basis, Congress tried to give our defense budget real growth in 2022, but the military will end up losing buying power due to the inflation. This historic inflation is a new — I call it the new sequestration. We all remember when we went through the sequestration together.
For me, this isn’t just about how much money we spent on defense; this is about how we spend the money. And we need a higher topline because what’s in this budget right now is not nearly enough to make up for lost time.
This budget shrinks both our naval fleet and our Air Force aircraft fleet. It cuts end strength, the end strength, which has been very disturbing to all of us. I’m glad to see the investment in research and development. So, some good things are out there working, and we’re all doing it together.
And the reason I took so long in this opening is this is the first budget hearing of the season. You know, people don’t realize that this goes on 12 months a year. And that’s what this is all about, and we’re gonna do a good job. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.