New Armed Services Committee Chairman Puts White House on Notice

"Constant misinformation from the president is a real problem in a democratic society, and we in Congress have got to do our best to hold him accountable," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who assumes chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in January.

Smith was reacting to a tally of inaccurate claims by President Donald Trump, in speeches or tweets, on issues military people and veterans care about, such as the relative size of pay raises, the purpose of border deployments, assertions of readiness in disarray before he became president, and his premature claims of expanded health care choices for veterans who rely on the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system.

The latest occurred during Trump's brief visit with U.S. troops in Iraq on Dec. 26 when he said again, as he had last May, that "the big pay raise you just got" -- 2.4 percent last January, a 2.6 percent increase to take effect next month -- was the first raise in "more than 10 years," according to a White House transcript.

And Trump added, falsely, that the military raise was 10 percent.

On Dec. 12, following an hour-long press breakfast hosted by the Defense Writers Group, Smith warned that a new Democratic majority in the House no longer will allow Trump misstatements targeting troops to slide.

At the breakfast, Smith also said the House committee with Democratic majority will resist some declared presidential plans for the Defense Department, including creation of a Space Force and a five percent bump in defense spending next year, which Trump embraced this month, reversing an earlier call for cuts.

On Space Force, Smith said, there is "bipartisan concern about creating a separate branch of the military." Even defense officials, he said, weren't "crazy about Space Force until the president decided we had to have one. ... But they know this isn't the best way."

He conceded a need "to place a greater emphasis on space" because "the Air Force hasn't done as good a job managing our space assets as they could. Difficulties we've had with space launch has been a good example."

The company United Launch Alliance (ULA) got "this monopoly 20 years ago," and enormous sums have been spent, Smith said.

"We have become reliant on Russian-made engines" on arguments that a U.S. investment would be too costly and "competition is impossible," he said. And yet, the company "SpaceX proved us wrong; they went out and did it."

Launch is just one of area of underperformance, Smith said. "But creating a whole new bureaucracy, a whole new branch, to address it [is not] the best way. It costs more money than it nets."

On securing the border with Mexico, Smith said Trump's deployment of active-duty forces before last November's elections, as a caravan of immigrants approached seeking asylum, was an "optics thing ... to make people believe this is an invasion and a huge problem."

It was "a misuse of our troops," he said.

Trump "misunderstands the problem," Smith added. Democrats agree that border security is important. Over the last dozen years, the border security budget quintupled, resulting in "a significant decline in unlawful border crossings," he said.

"We've had Guard and Reserve troops down there. ... We've built a wall; the president seems to have missed that. [But] on a lot of the property where the president wants [more] wall, some of it is tribal land, some of it is privately owned land, some of it is like 10,000 feet high, so you're not going to put a wall up there," Smith said.

"The challenge we are facing now is different. It's asylum seekers. You don't need to build more security because folks are not trying to sneak in. They are turning themselves in [to get] through the process," he said. "I don't deny there has been a significant increase in people seeking asylum, but the solution to that is not to harden the border. The solution is to hire more judges and expedite the process."

Trump, Smith said, misstates the challenge to stoke fear.

He echoed Sen. Chuck Schumer, ranking Democrat in the Senate, to note that of $1.3 billion in border security money approved for the current year, the administration had spent only six percent, or about $78 million.

Smith said he agrees with Democratic colleagues that defense spending needs to be brought into balance with spending on domestic programs.

"It's fair to say that in a Democratic budget, in a tight environment scenario, we're going to want to have other priorities in addition to defense," he said. "How do we do that? We did it last year by agreeing that we just weren't going to worry about how much money we spent ... on defense or domestic priorities. I don't know that that's going to work in the future."

The question then for defense budgets, Smith said, is what's the right number, assuming a return to "some kind of fiscal sanity."

The Republican approach to national security "is to point out all the areas where we don't have enough capability and say we have to spend more money," he said. Under current "strategy, we have to win a war with China and Russia, preferably simultaneously. We have to stop North Korea. And do all this stuff that, frankly, adds up to more money than we possibly have."

Smith added, "I'm interested in trying to find a national security strategy that balances risk [and] also understands that the strategy has to fit within a realistic budget framework. We can't do everything."

He noted recent arguments from the department that any budget below $733 billion for fiscal 2020 "would increase our risk," he said. "Well anything below $1 trillion will increase our risk? What's the magic of 733? I have asked that of several Pentagon officials. Thus far, I have not been satisfied with the answer."

Trump earlier this year ordered all federal departments, including the DoD, to cut budgets for 2020 by five percent. He even tweeted in early December that the $716 billion in defense spending authorized for 2019 was "crazy."

The next day, however, Trump met with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and top Republicans on the Armed Services Committee and agreed to back $750 billion for defense in 2020 -- $27 billion more than the DoD projected before Trump directed a department budget cut of five percent.

Smith noted that the nation's debt has reached $22 trillion and would soon be climbing by $1 trillion annually if Congress doesn't act. Interest on the debt will surpass the size of the defense budget this fiscal year, he said.

The debt "hangs over everything" because there's not "money to do what we'd all like to do" including repair bridges, roads and other deteriorating infrastructure, he added.

A prediction Smith got wrong in conversing with reporters in mid-December was the longevity of Mattis as defense chief.

"I think President Trump knows how important he is to the administration and what they're doing," Smith said. "I don't see any evidence whatsoever that he wants to leave or that the president wants him to."

A week later, Trump announced the withdrawal 2000 U.S. troops from Syria, a move Mattis vehemently opposed. The next day, Mattis became the first defense secretary to resign in protest over presidential orders impacting military operations.

Congressional leaders and U.S. allies, who had not been consulted, joined in criticizing the abrupt withdrawal, arguing it betrayed Kurdish forces allied with the U.S. in fighting the Islamic State.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who threatens to wipe out the Kurds, praised the move.

In his resignation letter, Mattis spelled out his differences with Trump on respecting allies and "being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors" like Russia and China.

Trump initially praised Mattis. When news reports focused on the tone of Mattis' letter, which Trump apparently had not read, the president criticized the retired Marine Corps general and ordered his departure by Jan. 1, two months earlier than Mattis planned to ensure a smooth transition.

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