Today's D Brief: Budget Day preview; Afghan evac, maybe; China’s space trackers; Searching for COVID’s origin; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston
May 27, 2021
The D Brief
Budget day preview: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley are scheduled to testify this afternoon on the military’s portion of the president’s 2022 budget request. That gets started at 1 p.m. ET before the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. Catch it live on C-SPAN or via the committee here.
Big picture: “President Biden will propose a $6 trillion budget on Friday that would take the United States to its highest sustained levels of federal spending since World War II, while running deficits above $1.3 trillion throughout the next decade,” the New York Times reports, noting that the White House budget is just a framework that lawmakers use to authorize and allocate funds. Still, the Times adds, “If Mr. Biden’s plans were enacted, the government would spend what amounts to nearly a quarter of the nation’s total economic output every year over the course of the next decade. It would collect tax revenues equal to just under one fifth of the total economy.”
The U.S. is looking into how to safely evacuate Afghans whose work has placed them in danger of being killed by the Taliban after U.S. and coalition forces complete their withdrawal, Defense One’s Tara Copp reported Wednesday while traveling with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/05/the-d-brief-may-27-2021/174346/
