Pentagon chiefs insist flat defense budget is enough – By Joe Gould (Defense News) / June 23 2021
WASHINGTON ― Top defense officials have completed multiple trips to Capitol Hill to defend President Joe Biden’s flat defense budget request, and now the task of tailoring that request falls to Congress.
The Biden administration sent Congress a fiscal 2022 budget request that seeks $715 billion for defense, which some progressives say is too much and lead Republicans say is too little.
In their last appearance of the budget season, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee the request is just right.
“I think that this budget provides us flexibility in granting the capabilities we need to support the operational concepts that will allow us to be not only competitive against any near peer, but actually dominant in that battlespace,” Austin said.
