President Trump Signs Defense Bill, Now Funding Fight Begins

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed a massive $700 billion defense budget into law Tuesday, leaving a fight ahead on how to pay for the plan.

The plan, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, busts budgetary caps and requires special legislative action to fund all the new priorities. Without it, the defense bill would trigger so-called sequestration – automatic, across-the-board spending cuts.

Congress is running the government until Dec. 22 on a continuing resolution -- a temporary funding measure -- and has yet to agree on an overall budget, including military spending.

"The defense bill authorizes major investments in our military's greatest weapon of all: its warriors," Trump said at the White House bill signing. "Now Congress must finish the job by eliminating the budget cap requirements and passing a clean appropriations bill. I think it's going to happen."

Stars and Stripes reports the 2018 fiscal year plan includes a 2.4 percent pay raise for service members, increases the size of the military, funds new ships and aircrafts and authorizes new spending on missile defense. The budget also includes necessary retention pay and bonuses and covers costly repairs for two Navy ships involved recently in deadly crashes.

"For too long, cuts to the defense budget have crippled military readiness and put the lives of our service members in danger," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. 

"We have seen the results of those unconscionable budget cuts: sailors and Marines are working 100-hour work weeks, the Air Force is short 1,500 pilots, only a handful of Army brigades are combat-ready, and more service members are being killed and injured in routine training accidents than by our enemies in combat. This is unacceptable and entirely avoidable," he said.

The 2018 defense bill allots about $634 billion for core Pentagon operations and nearly $66 billion for wartime missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. 

The funding boost pays for more troops, jet fighters, ships and other weapons needed to halt an erosion of the military's combat readiness, according to the bill's backers. 

Trump's 2018 request sought $603 billion for basic functions and $65 billion for overseas missions.

The defense legislation includes $12.3 billion for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency and orders a more rapid buildup of the nation's missile defense capabilities "as we continue our campaign to create maximum pressure on the vile dictatorship in North Korea," Trump said.

"We're working very diligently on that, building up forces," Trump said.