The Army and Congress are wrestling with this year’s version of a perennial budgetary tension: spending on upkeep of today’s equipment versus developing tomorrow’s.
House Armed Services Committee members, at a hearing Thursday on the Army’s $177.5 billion fiscal 2023 budget request, showed differing approaches to how much the size and capability of the current force must give in order to pay for developing next-generation systems.
Members split on largely party lines in the debate. GOP members have denigrated President Joe Biden’s budget request as posing a false choice between current and future requirements simply because the total amount of proposed funding is, they say, insufficient.
