The U.S. Capitol Building is lit at sunset in Washington, U.S., December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Austin Wright and Jeremy Herb, Politico: Trump's military build-up to spark GOP civil war
The president will make some strange alliances as he seeks a Pentagon budget boost.
President Donald Trump is about to blow up the uneasy détente between GOP defense and fiscal hawks.
The Pentagon is set to seek tens of billions of dollars from Congress to implement Trump’s vow to rebuild the military — “to load it up” with “beautiful new equipment,” as he said at the U.S. Central Command in Florida last week. And Republicans are already drawing battle lines over whether the extra defense dollars should be added to the deficit or, as many in the party have long insisted, be matched with equal cuts elsewhere.
It’s a fight that will test Trump’s skills as a dealmaker and have long-term implications for the GOP, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers.
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WNU editor: Sadly .... defense hawks will always beat the fiscal hawks when it comes to defense spending and budgets.