With budget sequestration just a few weeks away, Congress and the White House don’t appear any closer to reaching a compromise. Congressional Republicans on Feb. 6 offered up the “Down Payment to Protect National Security Act of 2013,” as a means of staving off the dreaded across-the-board defense cuts slated to take effect on March 1. The down-payment plan would prevent additional cuts to the Pentagon’s budget in Fiscal 2013 beyond the $46 billion already cut over the past two years under President Obama’s “budget-driven defense strategy,” states a House Armed Services Committee fact sheet. That’s in contrast to the President’s proposal to avoid the sequester by cutting $21 billion from the Pentagon’s budget for the remainder of the fiscal year in addition to more tax hikes and some lesser non-defense spending cuts, according to the HASC’s analysis. Click here to continue to the full report.
President Donald Trump is proposing a 13 percent increase in defense spending for fiscal 2026, growth that could mean the first ever $1 trillion defense budget, according to a document obtained by Air & Space Forces Magazine.