Jim Inhofe: “This budget also fails to make any progress in a growing or modernizing Air Force. Instead, the Biden budget procurement…”

“This budget also fails to make any progress in a growing or modernizing Air Force. Instead, the Biden budget procurement actually decreases by almost 15 percent across the entire military. The Air Force is 20 percent. President Biden's own nominee for the Secretary of the Air Force told us that one of the best things that we could do is to accelerate the buying of additional F-35s, but this budget doesn't do that. The fleet just gets older and smaller. Perhaps the greatest casualty of the Biden budget is the Army. I guess I am used to that by now. I was a product of the Army, and all my Army friends remember what happened back in 1994. I was in the House at that time and on the House Armed Services Committee. At that time, I can remember when someone who was in a hearing--an expert--predicted that, in 10 years, we would no longer need ground troops. Of course, we know what has happened since that time. The greatest casualty is always the Army. Instead of investing, it deeply cuts the Army across the board in its modernization, procurement, force structure, and readiness. I can't understand why we decreased full spectrum training just as we have started to get healthy after the readiness crisis of 2017, and we all remember what happened in 2017. That was the last 5 years of the Obama administration, and they were the years that cut our military substantially. They actually did reduce our budget in the last 5 years by 25 percent, the military budget.…”