Smith Statement on FY 2019 Budget Request
Washington, D.C. – Today, House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) released the following statement about the President’s FY 2019 budget request:
“It is essential that we provide the Department of Defense with stable, coherent budgets that enable our military to defend the United States and our allies in a complex threat environment. I am concerned we are moving to do so in a fiscally unsound way, having just cut taxes on the order of $2 trillion and brought back trillion-dollar deficits. When you cut taxes in the face of a $22 trillion debt and increase the deficit from $700 billion to nearly a trillion, you are making a public policy decision about what you do and don’t want to spend money on, and those tax cuts will reverberate in our budget calculus—including the defense budget—for years to come.
“The President’s budget request is only a request, and Congress will ultimately decide what happens. But if budgets are an expression of values, the picture President Trump painted with this request is not pretty. This budget does not adhere to the nondefense side of the budget deal worked out by Congress. It again undermines essential government functions, and those functions are just as important to American citizens today as they were last year. He proposes an infrastructure plan that would allow the selling off of public assets to private entities, further eroding the federal government’s role in helping to sustain our country’s infrastructure, while removing critical environmental standards in construction. He does not put people first, nor does he account for the essential contributions that nondefense programs make to our economic and national security.”