Sen. John McCain on Monday released a plan to boost military spending by $430 billion over a five-year period.
The Arizona Republican, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, authored a white paper titled "Restoring American Power" that seeks to repair and rebuild a military that has been left "underfunded, undersized, and unready" by the Budget Control Act.
"The President-elect has said he wants to 'fully eliminate the defense sequester' and 'rebuild the military.' I could not agree more," McCain said in a statement.
"This white paper details what I believe will be necessary to achieve these goals: repeal of the Budget Control Act, a $640 billion base defense budget in fiscal year 2018, innovation for the future, and an end to business as usual at the Pentagon.
"Rebuilding our military will not be cheap — $430 billion above current defense plans over the next five years. But the cost of inaction is worse: we will irreparably damage our military’s ability to deter aggression and conflict. We owe it to our men and women in uniform to chart a better course," McCain said.
McCain calls for a base budget of $640 billion in 2018, $54 billion over President Barack Obama's proposed budget.
McCain outlined two "broad priorities" for the boost in spending:
- Modernizing the joint forces of the military.
- Regaining capacity for the military.
McCain said the U.S. military "does not have enough ships, aircraft, vehicles, munitions, equipment, and personnel to perform its current missions at acceptable levels of risk.
"To be clear, adding capacity alone is not the answer, and any capacity that we do add, especially personnel, must be done deliberately and sustainably."
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