GOP senator urges $55B defense budget boost to counter China, Russia and Iran

Politics

By Josh Christenson

The leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee is bucking his party’s isolationist leanings and urging an increase of $55 billion in defense spending to counter Chinese, Russian and Iranian aggression.

Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) released a wide-ranging plan on Wednesday to confront the “emerging Axis of Aggressors” by giving the fiscal year 2025 defense budget a boost and upping its spending to 5% of the nation’s GDP in five to seven years.

“When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the US Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II,” Wicker wrote in a New York Times op-ed announcing the plan.

“Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being underequipped and outgunned,” he added. “We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated.”

“Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive,” Wicker went on. “Their unprecedented coordination makes new global conflict increasingly possible.”

Wicker announced his plan after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin touted their alliance earlier this month as the Kremlin’s 27-month-old war against Ukraine grinds on.

Putin’s two-day visit to Beijing — his first trip abroad after being inaugurated to a fifth term in office — reflected a growing partnership between the two nations, an alliance grounded in support for authoritarian regimes and dominance in their respective regions.

Wicker’s “21st Century Peace Through Strength” blueprint would reverse that decline by growing the Navy to 357 ships by 2035 and increasing the Air Force fighter jet fleet to at least 340 in the next five years, among other modernization efforts to US military branches.

In particular, Wicker noted an $11 billion shortfall for defense priorities in the Indo-Pacific, as well as a $180 billion backlog in military spending on maintenance and training.

“Our military readiness could be at its lowest point in decades just as China’s military in particular hits its stride,” he wrote. “China, on the other hand, has no such problems, as it accumulates the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal with a mix of other lethal cruise and attack missiles.”

Wicker’s other proposals include a “strategic breakout” with the Space Force placing more satellites in the sky — just as Russia has developed nuclear capabilities to shoot those down — and additional arms sales to Persian Gulf partner nations.

It also budgets for troop deployments to the US-Mexico border — a policy proposal floated by former Attorney General Bill Barr and GOP presidential candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the past year.

“We do not need to spend this much indefinitely,” Wicker added, “but we do need a short-term generational investment to help us prevent another world war.”

The Mississippian acknowledged in an interview with the Associated Press that his proposal breaks with a 1% cap on increases to the defense budget, which was set by Hill Republicans and the White House during debt ceiling negotiations last year.

The White House’s fiscal year 2025 defense budget requested $895 billion — an increase of 4.3% from two years ago — of which the Pentagon would receive $850 billion.

The GOP-controlled House Armed Services Committee sought a higher Pentagon budget level, and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) will reportedly introduce his own version of the annual defense spending authorization in June.

Congress pushed through a $95.3 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in April, which faced bipartisan opposition despite the majority of its funding going toward the US defense industrial base.

Wicker’s plan likely faces an uphill battle to congressional approval — but could receive the support of outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has made several floor speeches in favor of greater US deterrence efforts.