Key Republican calls for 'generational' increase in defense spending

FILE - Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., meets with reporters during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 11, 2024. The top Republican on a Senate committee that oversees the U.S. military is making an argument for aggressively increasing defense spending over negotiated spending caps. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, is releasing a plan for a “generational investment” that seeks to deter coordinated threats from U.S.

Wicker acknowledged it would be “a hill to climb” to convince Congress to break from the spending caps at a time of deep political upheaval. Washington is still grappling with divisions over support for, the aftershocks of two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a presidential election between two presumptive candidates — Biden and RepublicanBut Wicker said the nation has no choice.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Wicker said, “nobody took a chance against the United States because we were powerful enough to keep the peace. We are simply not anywhere near that right now.”Wicker's full plan is laid out in a paper he has been working on for the last year. In it, he makes the case for crafting a new generation of weaponry, pointing to Russia's moves to expand its territory in Europe and China's attempts to show increasing dominance in parts of the Pacific.

Still, the spending increases are likely to be viewed skeptically by lawmakers wary of growing the defense budget, which already dominates annual discretionary funding. The legislation to suspend the nation's debt limit passed Congress with strong bipartisan support and aimed to limit federal budget growth to 1% for the next six years, although the spending caps were only mandatory through this year's budget.

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