The Price of Protection: Defense Appropriations Explained
The primary responsibility of government is to ensure the safety of its citizens, and protecting Americans is the chief focus of Defense Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-CA). In this week’s episode of Appropriations 101, Calvert offers valuable insights into the crucial FY25 Defense bill.
During his discussion with Interior and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-ID), Calvert highlighted his efforts to increase servicemember base pay, spur U.S. military innovation and modernization, and maintain our competitive edge against the world’s most dangerous adversaries.
Watch Subcommittee Chairman Calvert and Subcommittee Chairman Simpson’s conversation here.
Simpson: “One of the things I've been concerned about over the years is we have had in the past, and probably still do today, men and women who serve us in the military, who are actually on food stamps because the pay is so low. We have a voluntary military, and you wonder why they would join the military for that pay level. I know you've been very active in trying to get that pay level up for them to attract the best and the brightest.”
Calvert: “Absolutely, one of our Defense Subcommittee Members is Mike Garcia from California. He was an F-18 pilot and graduated from the Naval Academy. He has been really pressing hard to get a raise to these young recruits – E-1s to E-6s. Right now, a private, let's say, in the Army, when he or she comes in, they get $11 an hour based on a 40-hour week – and those kids are working a lot more than 40 hours a week. Right now, they could go to McDonald's for $20 an hour in California. We're trying to kick the base salary on the E-1s to $15 and up the scale up to the E-6s, just to get a better lifestyle. [Pay] is not the only reason we're not meeting the recruitment levels in the Army or Navy – the Marine Corps always seems to meet their recruiting goals – but we are having some difficulties, and we need to have a better pay scale.”
Simpson: “You mentioned China and the amount of money they're putting in their defense resources, what is our Navy ship level compared to China?”
Calvert: “China is approaching a 400-ship Navy. We are down to 280 ships…You could take all the shipyards in the United States, both public and private, and they would fit in one shipyard in China, and that's just one of maybe a dozen shipyards of that size. China right now is making over 50% of all operational ships in the world today. The other two countries that are making ships are South Korea and Japan. The United States used to be the number one ship maker in the world, and now we are way down. We've got to get our industrial base back.”
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Simpson: “We spend a lot of money in the private sector developing weapons and research.”
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Calvert: “The private sector does a better job in software development, the artificial intelligence world, and a lot of the technologies that are being developed… We've got to join with them to create innovation and to bring these new systems to bear for the benefit of the warfighter. That's why we created the DIU, which Doug Beck is over there, which is the Defense Innovation Unit. We've got a new program called APFIT that Heidi Shyu runs over at the Department of Defense to identify new technologies and get them through the so-called “Valley of Death” to the point where we can develop these systems and get them into production. That has been successful. We've also created an office that helps finance certain kinds of systems that the private sector can also get involved in, which would help develop a capital market: the Office of Strategic Capital. We're trying to think out of the box to get more resources into the Department as rapidly as possible because time is not on our side.”
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Simpson: “When America is weak, the rest of the world is in danger, at least Western civilization - I worry that China is sitting and watching what's happening between Ukraine and Russia. [They’re watching] what's happening in Israel, and I'm nervous about Taiwan and China.”
Calvert: “As you know, Mike, 90% of the chips made in the world are made in Taiwan. Every technology that we have out there, whether your television, your radio, car, truck, heavy equipment, or how we move products, all have these chips in them. If China was able to take Taiwan, they would put us in a very difficult situation. Taiwan, in China's belief, is the last province of China, and they want it back. They've made no secret of that, and they're willing to use force to do so. We have an agreement with Taiwan that they would stay independent. This is a very serious thing. Japan has been a great ally with us in this, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and India, all of us need to act together to make sure that Taiwan stays independent. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but for our own economic security.”
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