AUGUSTA, Maine — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and a bipartisan group of lawmakers want to boost President Joe Biden’s defense budget beyond the 1 percent increase called for in last year’s debt ceiling deal, but a divided Congress and the looming November elections will likely stall any action this year.
Biden has requested $895 billion in defense spending for 2025, up from the current $886 billion budget. But Collins, a Republican from Maine, said a $22.5 billion annual boost is needed to keep pace with “must-pay” costs for medical care, military pay and fuel. The president’s proposal is in line with the 1 percent cap included in the deal Collins and the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation voted for last summer to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 to avert a government default.
Collins, the top Republican on the Senate’s budget committee, and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee focused on defense, told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday the $895 billion request is not enough.
The U.S. spends more money on defense than the next several countries behind it combined. Around one-sixth of federal spending goes to national defense, but lawmakers calling for a bigger budget cited overseas wars and threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran and China.
“If the world were becoming safer, then perhaps such a reduction could be absorbed with little risk to national security,” Collins said during Wednesday’s subcommittee hearing on the defense budget request. “But unfortunately that is not the world in which we live.”
While Collins, Tester and several peers on both sides of the aisle are pushing for a bigger 2025 defense budget, a divided Congress that has been one of the most unproductive in decades and Republican infighting complicate any funding gambit.
The possibility of the two parties either gaining or losing control of each chamber in November also makes it less likely for any defense spending deal to come together this year. The Pentagon did benefit from Congress finding enough consensus in April to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Last summer, Collins lamented the “completely inadequate top-line number for our national defense” while adding she did not want “to see our country default for the first time in history.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, also said last year the debt ceiling deal would not prevent the chamber from approving additional emergency funding for defense, but the Republican-controlled House did not back a deal from Collins and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Washington, to give the Pentagon an additional $8 billion in emergency funds.
On Wednesday, Collins mentioned the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard that straddles Maine and New Hampshire, the Defense Finance Accounting Service facility in northern Maine, Bath Iron Works and Pratt & Whitney in North Berwick to note thousands of Mainers work in defense.
“All of the men and women who serve our country — whether in uniform, or in the defense industrial base, or as a civilian federal employee — deserve a budget that supports them,” Collins said.
Collins mentioned Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hamas, Iran and China on Wednesday in describing her issues with Biden’s budget request. Her office referred to those remarks and her comments last year when asked about her call for going beyond the 1 percent increase.
“The budget request would result in the smallest Air Force fleet in the service’s history,” Collins said. “We would have the smallest Army since the start of the all-volunteer force in 1973. Our naval fleet of 290 ships is already smaller than China’s fleet of more than 370 ships.”
