McConnell: America Faces Grave Threats, Time To Invest Accordingly
‘It is absurd to pretend that we can outcompete the pacing threat from China - let alone simultaneous conflicts - when the President won’t even submit defense budgets that keep pace with inflation! We’re spending half as much on defense as a percentage of GDP as we did during President Reagan’s buildup. But we’re facing even more serious threats than we did back then.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding defense spending:
“Last Thursday, the Pentagon announced for the second time in as many weeks that U.S. military personnel would withdraw from years of work on security cooperation with major nations in North Africa.
“America has now effectively been pushed out of Chad, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, making more room for Russia and China.
“Here at home, appropriators are parsing President Biden’s fourth straight proposal to cut defense spending in real-dollar terms. And they’re discovering, among other glaring red flags, that he intends to meet China’s surging spending on shipbuilding with the smallest request for Navy ships in fifteen years.
“The Biden Administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy explicitly prioritize great power competition.
“But does it sound like America is effectively engaged in that competition? Does any of this look like the behavior of a superpower that intends to maintain its influence and defend its interests?
“It certainly doesn’t to me. This Administration behaves more like an ostrich than a superpower.
“For two years, Russia’s war in Ukraine has called urgent attention to shortcomings in Western stockpiles and production capacity for critical munitions.
“For months, defending against attacks from Iran and its proxies has forced the United States to incur significant unplanned costs and expend major stores of cutting-edge missile and air defense interceptors. But despite this surging demand, the President’s request leaves the budget for munitions stagnant.
“I’ve said repeatedly that growing our production capacity and munitions stockpiles in a sustainable way will require more than urgent supplemental investments. It will take building these requirements into our base budget.
“We’re facing growing, interconnected threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and a host of terrorist proxies – an axis bent on eroding American influence, dominating our friends, and killing our servicemembers.
“This is not news. And unfortunately, neither is this sort of willfull blindness from Democratic administrations when it comes to growing threats.
“After all, it was President Obama who decided to let a budget number dictate national security priorities rather than letting strategy inform spending. It was the Obama-Biden Administration that abandoned the ‘two-war’ planning construct that had long guided how we structure and resource our armed forces.
“The risk that America and our allies will have to fight simultaneously in two regions is real. It’s growing. And it’s time to start taking this risk seriously.
“It is absurd to pretend that we can outcompete the pacing threat from China – let alone simultaneous conflicts – when the President won’t even submit defense budgets that keep pace with inflation!
“We’re spending half as much on defense as a percentage of GDP as we did during President Reagan’s buildup. But we’re facing even more serious threats than we did back then.
“‘Show me your budget – and I’ll tell you what you value.’ Those are the words of President Biden.
“I had hoped that the chaos of world events would lead our friends on the other side of the aisle to see the value in addressing grave and growing threats to our national security.
“But the President’s budget request suggests otherwise. And so does the latest suggestion from the chair of the Appropriations Committee that she would pair any increase in defense spending with more domestic spending on her party’s priorities.
“So, Mr. President, the game is up. We cannot afford to pretend it is business as usual around here.
“We can’t let partisan spending priorities hold the common defense hostage.
“It’s time to acknowledge that the growing threats to our peace and prosperity deserve our utmost attention.
“But if neither our Commander-in-Chief nor our Congress take investments in American leadership and American strength seriously, how on earth can we expect our adversaries to?”
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Related Issues: Russia, Appropriations, China, Iran, National Security
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