3 weeks ago
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Sen. Roger Wicker, one of Capitol Hill’s most vocal defense hawks, will soon get the chance to pursue a larger Pentagon budget — and it stands a much better chance with Donald Trump headed back to the White House.
The Mississippi Republican is poised to chair the Armed Services Committee after the GOP romped in Tuesday’s Senate elections. And he brings to the role a plan for tens of billions of dollars in new military spending to expand the Navy and Air Force, modernize the nuclear arsenal and ramp up defense manufacturing.
"We're not where we need to be in our Navy and our Air Force," Wicker told Mississippi’s WAPT News in an election night interview. "So that's going to be an opportunity for me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, if this majority that's been projected does hold, to work across the aisle ... and build up our military so we can stay out of war."
Though Wicker, who has been the top Armed Services Republican since 2023, might have the inside track with a Trump administration on spending, he’ll also be one of the most prominent GOP advocates of continuing to arm Ukraine. As chair, he’d likely need to navigate differences between defense hawks and Trump on whether to continue aid.
Budget battle plan: Wicker laid out his preferred roadmap for defense in the spring, urging the U.S. to make “a short-term generational investment” to deter an increasingly cooperative Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, which he has termed an “Axis of Aggressors.”
The plan proposes a $55 billion hike over President Joe Biden’s most recent defense budget request, eventually ramping up to 5 percent of gross domestic product — which would bring annual military spending to more than $1 trillion. Within that, Wicker wants to expand shipyard and industrial capacity to more quickly achieve a 355-ship Navy and expand the Air Force by blocking the retirement of some aircraft and adding 340 fighters over five years.
Wicker won an initial round in June when a bipartisan coalition in the Armed Services Committee voted to increase the price tag of its annual defense policy bill by $25 billion.
That heightened spending may not come to fruition this year, as extra funding would break budget caps agreed to last year and could see opposition from fiscal hardliners in the House. But it showed bipartisan support for a larger military budget that Wicker could capitalize on as chair.
A Trump roadmap? Perhaps just as importantly, some experts argue Wicker’s detailed budget blueprint could provide the GOP administration with fodder for at least their initial defense budget request. While the full extent of Trump’s Pentagon plans isn’t yet clear, confirming top officials and other issues could constrain his first-year spending blueprint.
"They're going to probably want to go to people whom they trust more and lean on them,” said Bradley Bowman, a former Senate Republican aide who is now a senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And that would be Sen. Wicker.”
Though hawks have muscled through defense increases in divided government, Wicker has criticized Biden’s spending plans as unserious. He likened raising the Pentagon budget under a Democratic White House “pulling teeth” and suggested a GOP president would be more committed to the cause.
"We're going to have to increase our national defense to keep us out of a war,” Wicker said in a recent interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “The idea is to keep the peace by being so strong nobody will take a chance on us."
Ukraine campaigner: Wicker — a vocal GOP advocate for Ukraine aid alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — urged Biden to use his final days to step up support for Kyiv. He wants faster weapons transfers and looser restrictions on strikes inside Russia, arguing the administration’s limits have left Kyiv “hamstrung.”
While it would be easy for Wicker to confront another Democratic administration for not giving Ukraine what it needs, it's an open question how he would approach Trump, who has opposed more U.S. spending and has instead said he aims to broker an end to the conflict before he even takes office.
Observers say Wicker is likely to keep those differences behind closed doors.
Bowman argued that Wicker’s “unimpeachable conservative credentials” could help him make an argument on the value of NATO and arming Ukraine. Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that while there's still considerable Republican support for arming Ukraine, a potential Trump administration must be convinced to ask for more aid. That could occur, she argued, if the White House is convinced it hastens an end to the war with Russia.
"If their team can be convinced that a last and final surge of military assistance for Ukraine — that is almost entirely spent here in the United States — strengthens Ukraine’s position in a negotiated settlement to end the war, then it is possible," Eaglen said. “I suspect this will be attempted in private as long as possible to see what comes over in a [fiscal 2026] White House budget request and whether it includes a supplemental.”
