Yesterday, the Senate voted 52-48 in favor of a budget resolution that allocates $345 billion in spending for U.S.-Mexico border security, energy independence, Coast Guard modernization and military investments while mandating cuts elsewhere. “This budget resolution allows the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees to spend up to $175 billion in total to implement President Trump’s border security agenda,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement issued after the vote. “It instructs the Armed Services Committee to spend up to $150 billion to make our military more lethal. It also allocates up to $20 billion to be spent to modernize the Coast Guard.”
Graham said he wants to see a larger Navy, integrated air and missile defense and a strengthening of the nuclear defense posture. “There’s a lot of modernization we need of our nuclear triad fleet,” Graham said, reported Stars & Stripes. “We need more weapons, our stockpile is low. There’s a bunch of things we can spend $150 billion on but we’ll let the Armed Services Committee decide those priorities.” The $20 billion being earmarked for the Coast Guard is to enhance its capability to deal with “drugs and national security threats,” he said.