Back in 2013, when Gen. James Mattis was head of the U.S. Central Command, he told the Senate, “If you don't fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.”
On Monday, President Trump proposed cutting this year's State Department's budget by 26 percent. Fulfilling his own prediction, Secretary of Defense Mattis is proposing a 28 percentincrease in spending for missiles and munitions—a 50 percent increase over the sum for those items in President Obama's last budget.
To put it another way: The $20.7 billion he's requesting for just missiles and munitions—a mere 3 percent of the total military budget—amounts to just a little less than the $25.8 billion that Trump is asking for the entire State Department.
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