Sharp divisions over the adequacy of President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2023 request for the Navy’s shipbuilding budget emerged at two House hearings Wednesday.
The differences, which fell largely along party lines, were manifest at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense budget hearing with the Pentagon top brass and a House Armed Services Committee hearing with the leaders of the Navy and Marine Corps.
At the Defense Appropriations hearing, the top Republican appropriator, Kay Granger of Texas, and the ranking Republican member of the Defense panel, Ken Calvert of California, complained the Navy would decommission significantly more ships in fiscal 2023 than it plans to procure, while China’s fleet is already larger — and growing more rapidly — than America’s.
