Last week, President Joe Biden unveiled his budget proposal, which included a $773 billion request for military spending.
Although that may seem like a lot, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, warns it is not enough to keep up with inflation.
During an appearance on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5's "The Jeff Poor Show," Rogers insisted policymakers should focus on rethinking national defense and fund programs that will help the military adapt to new threats.
"One of the things that has really put a lot of attention on this issue -- the world is paying attention to international security," Rogers said. "But more importantly for us, the American people are paying attention and are horrified by what's happening over there. So, I think the public is going to be very welcoming of what we're going to have to do as a country to make sure that we stay ahead of threats from Russia and from China, which is the long-term concern.
"We're in the process -- we already were in the process of starting to transform our military to deal with threats to the future. We set up the Space Force to get after the space domain, which now is a warfighting domain. We've got to do a lot of stuff in the area of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and quantum computing. We're moving away from terrestrial fights like we had in the Middle East - and like you're seeing happening in Eastern Europe right now - and preparing for conflicts with China, not only in the Indo-Pacific but around the world that are going to be more sea-based, as well as air, space and cyber."
Rogers explained how the Biden request is not enough to fund this transformation or even keep pace with the rate of inflation.
"So we're going to have to transform," Rogers said. "It's going to take time. It's going to be expensive. At a minimum, we've got to make sure we're going to fund the Defense Department at least to keep up with inflation just to be able to do what we're doing now. But as far as this transformation, it's going to take some additional money over the cost of inflation."
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