For the past two and a half years, my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee and I have worked with President Trump to put our nation’s military back on track. During the Obama presidency, budget sequestration went into effect. This policy mandated 10 percent across-the-board funding cuts, severely harming the Pentagon. Equipment was left unrepaired, recruitment and training programs were slashed, and procurement was stalled. Many Mississippi workers who build ships and aircraft lost their jobs.

President Trump’s most recent budget request of $750 billion for defense spending will build on recent progress under his administration to undo this damage. It will make strides to repair our industrial base, increase readiness, and reverse our military’s decline.

However, despite the spending deals of the last few years and President Trump’s commitments, the sequestration law is still on the books. If nothing changes, automatic cuts will take effect in January of 2020, restarting the era of sequestration.

Congress and the president should change course by reaching a new budget deal. That would ideally include multi-year funding above the dangerously low caps set by sequestration. Our soldiers and suppliers need long-term certainty and the tools necessary to fulfill their missions.

Cutting Defense Spending is Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

While it is important for the federal government to control spending, cuts should not be made on the backs our men and women in uniform. As former Defense Secretary James Mattis noted, “No enemy in the field has done more to harm the combat readiness of our military than sequestration.”

I asked Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer what another sequester would mean. His response could not have been clearer. “This would just knock us flat down,” he said.

Other countries took note of our retreat from our responsibilities during the last sequester. Russia annexed Crimea, China continued its aggression in the South China Sea, and Iranian-backed militias in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon undermined America and Israel’s interests in the Middle East. When the U.S. is unable to meet its commitments across the globe, our adversaries fill the vacuum.

President Reagan once observed, “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.” In the long run, countering new challenges could cost more money and lives than maintaining military superiority over our competitors ever would. But, should deterrence fail, the American military needs to have the resources to win.

What the Military Needs 

The Pentagon described how the United States can win in the 21^st century in its 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS). The NDS recognizes the reality of competition between and among states and what will be required to avoid confrontation.

A 2020 sequester would make the NDS impossible to execute and would systematically deny service branches what they need not only to make progress, but even to maintain their current levels.

Shipbuilders along the Gulf Coast and manufacturers across this country are ready to supply our troops for the NDS, and American service members are up to the challenge. But Congress has the power of the purse and should use that power to ensure America’s armed forces remain the strongest in the world.