Governor John Kasich, like Senator Marco Rubio, also called to increase spending on the military during the fourth Republican presidential campaign debate. How would he do that? He has put forth a plan to balance the budget over eight years and set specific levels for discretionary and entitlement spending, except for Social Security [we have an overview of his plan, but we will revisit it in more detail in a follow up post]. And he also specified spending levels for defense.
This past August, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast the budget baseline for the next ten years. CBO expects outlays for defense to amount to $592 billion in FY 2017, and would cost a total of $5.234 trillion from FY 2018-2025.
Kasich’s plan, starting in FY 2018, funds defense at $627 billion, rising to $694 billion in 2025. Over the eight year period, his plan would devote $5.305 trillion to defense.
In total, Kasich’s plan would spend an additional $71 billion over CBO’s budget projection based on current law. But whereas CBO projects relatively steady annual increases over the time period, Kasich’s plan would speed up outlays over the first few years, but after 2022, his spending would be lower than CBO’s outlook.
With the increased spending, Kasich proposes to:
- Defeat ISIS;
- Challenge regional aggression from Russia and China;
- Rebuild the military;
- Streamline the Pentagon bureaucracy;
- Transform the procurement process;
- Strengthen cyber defenses.
During the campaign season, NTU Foundation is tracking the costs of the proposals offered by the Presidential candidates. For more information on Kasich’s fiscal record and agenda, please see an overview of his legislative agenda in the House, and the complete analyses of his debate proposals.