Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress that President Donald Trump’s Pentagon budget plan will not be sufficient to fulfill his campaign promise to “rebuild” the U.S. military, CNN reported on Friday.
Mattis made those comments in private, per CNN’s report, which cites four unnamed sources familiar with those conversations.
One unnamed Republican lawmaker told CNN that Mattis said he is “being thwarted getting his message out” that the budget plan “is insufficient to do what Trump has called for.”
CNN also reported that the Trump administration’s Pentagon budget request falls short of what the Pentagon wanted, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the deliberations.
“We expect Congress will work with the administration to fund much of our additional (fiscal) 2017 budget request,” a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement to CNN. “The secretary and the service chiefs highlighted the readiness needs of the armed forces in their recent testimony. That has not changed.”
