Two top Democrats blasted the proposal, calling it a “blatant attempt to make a mockery of the federal budget process.”

The release of the 2020 defense budget is still over a month away, and it’s already been a wild ride. A look at what has happened, and what might happen next.

We have been here before. In 1982 Caspar Weinberger and David Stockman had a similar showdown referred by President Reagan. DOD won that time. What does that have to tell us about the impending Mulvaney–Mattis showdown? And if OMB wins this time, would Mattis stay on?

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump injected a fresh dose of uncertainty over defense spending Monday when he derided 2019’s defense budget — which he readily signed and has praised for months — as “Crazy!” The sharp turn in sentiment came in another dreaded early-morning presidential tweet that often shift the talking points for entire segments of… Keep reading →

The White House surprised DoD with a last-minute $33 billion budget trim last week. But it’s far from certain that the cuts will outlive months of haggling between the Trump administration, the Pentagon and Congress.

Trump campaigned on more money for the Pentagon, but his budget director appears to have won the fight for sweeping, across the board cuts to all federal agencies, including the Pentagon.

The last time the US Army tried to modernize it spent $20 billion buying the Future Combat System, which was cancelled as it foundered. Is the Army repeating the same mistakes with its Big Six?

WASHINGTON: The federal government needs to spend more money on civilian agencies like the State Department, NASA, and the FAA, not just defense, the aerospace industry’s top lobbyist said today, but there’s no reasoning with a portion of Congress that wants cuts at any cost. “There’s a part of Congress that’s suspicious of everything,” said… Keep reading →

Campaign promises of a larger, more ready and fully modernized military have slammed into budget realities as the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget for the Pentagon shows only modest growth above what the Obama administration had projected. Funding at those levels will support a 305-ship Navy, not the 350 ships that candidate Trump proposed back in… Keep reading →

Two weeks from today America will either be a laughingstock or Congress will have done the responsible thing, the necessary thing, and passed some kind of useful spending bills. Or, as Mark Cancian, a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget, suggests, there may be a sort of defense spending bandage to strap… Keep reading →