Fresh from a bruising budget battle, President Donald Trump and GOP leaders Tuesday hailed the deal as a first step in a big boost in military spending, one of the president's major campaign pledges.
"We are taking care of our military, and we're not going to go back to what we were doing for the last long period of time," the president said at a Rose Garden event Tuesday honoring the U.S. Air Force Academy football team.
The budget resolution, which had once again become a political football amid threats of a government shutdown, includes an additional $25 billion in funding for the Defense Department.
That's about half of what the president asked for in his preliminary "skinny" budget proposal last month, but Republicans hailed the agreement as a break from an Obama-era practice of balancing changes in in defense spending with comparable funding for domestic programs.
"This means that we can finally make real important strides to increase and improve our readiness," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Tuesday. "It means we can get our service members the tools and the resources they need to confront the threats that we face all around the world."
The increase in U.S. defense spending follows declines in spending that accompanied the drawdown of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even with those cuts, the U.S. spends more than the next eight biggest national defense budgets in the world — combined.
Military spending flattened and then declined around the world following the financial crisis a decade ago. U.S. spending picked up again in 2015, topping $600 billion, according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Last year, China boosted its annual defense budget to $215 billion, making it the second largest in the world. Russia raised spending to $70 billion, making it the third largest.
Watch: Defense stocks can act as insurance policy
Playing
Watch Next...
