"In keeping with President Trump’s habit of exaggeration, he has been telling Congress and journalists that his budget increases the size of the military by 56,000 service members. This is a ruse, because it doesn’t take into account the 24,000 active duty and 13,000 reservists that Congress added in last year’s enacted NDAA," Smith said.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a US federal law that specifies the budget for the Department of Defense. Congress passes a new act for each fiscal year.
Smith said Trump's budget would only increase the military by 10,700 service members.
"In fact, the real number requested is only 8,000 active duty and 2,700 reservists. This trend toward the use of misleading numbers in defense accounting is not a good thing," Smith said.
The White House unveiled Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal on May 23. The plan makes cuts throughout government agencies and scales back spending on a number of programs that the administration considers ineffective.
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