If the U.S. military is to maintain its world-leading status, budget caps need to be removed, lest troops be put at greater risk and the deterioration continue.
“Congress as a whole has met the present challenge with lassitude, not leadership,” charged Mattis.
The Budget Control Act caps military spending for the coming fiscal year at $549 billion. Trump’s budget calls for $603 billion, while Republican defense hawks have called for $640 billion.
Mattis described the automatic spending cuts, or sequestering, that the act put in place as deeply damaging, saying he was shocked by the impact on the forces’ readiness to fight.
“No enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration,” said Mattis. “Because as expensive as it is for the American people to fund the military, it is far less costly in lives and treasure than a conventional war that we are unable to deter because we are seen as weak.”
He laid out four forces wearing down military advantage, starting off with 16 years of war that has exhausted equipment, and finances.
The second is a dark turn in global security, and the decline in the rule-based international order the United States helped create. The result, said Mattis, was a global security environment more volatile than any he'd seen in four decades of military service.
