President must flesh out agenda outlined Tuesday

When it comes to presi- dential agendas, the devil is in the details. This is especially true of a president who has no record as an officeholder or a public servant.

President Donald J. Trump laid out a far-reaching agenda Tuesday night in his first address to a joint session of Congress, and while we support some of the initiatives we wonder how he intends to make them a reality.

From a very parochial standpoint, the Republican president’s plan to increase defense spending by $54 billion is deserving of a positive response from residents of the Mahoning Valley because of what it could mean for the future of the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, the Air Force Reserve’s sprawling base in Vienna Township.

That said, we do have concerns about funding for the U.S. State Department possibly being cut by one-third. The role the department plays in sustaining America’s presence in the world should not be dismissed.

Indeed, the strong military that the president envisions with the increased spending would be hamstrung in its operations abroad without having State Department officials on the ground to bolster its efforts.

Throughout the campaign and in the 39 days he has been in office, President Trump has talked about cutting government spending, thereby reducing the bureaucracy. He has shown an almost cavalier attitude toward America’s leadership in the world through the use of foreign aid.

Indeed, Republicans on Capitol Hill are signaling that boosting defense spending at the expense of the State Department and other agencies and federal programs is a nonstarter.

GOP Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said the budget blueprint presented by the administration could not possibly pass the House.

“No, no. There’s a lot of members that have a lot of interest in a lot of those programs,” Simpson said on the eve of the president’s address Tuesday night. “There’s more to our government than just defense.”

Negotiations

Without a doubt, a great deal of negotiating will take place before the administration and the Republican majority in Congress decide on a spending blueprint for the federal government.

However, we believe that the president is on the right track when he talks about boosting defense spending and launching a $1 trillion infrastructure improvement program over the next decade.

Again, the devil is in the details, but the direction the president, a billionaire real-estate developer from New York City, is forging on some of the issues of particular importance to the Valley are worthy of support.

We are particularly interested in the details underlying the increase in defense spending because of the uncertainties surrounding the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

In the past, Trump has talked about the need to upgrade weapons systems and other equipment.

The base is home to the ever important 910th Airlift Wing, which has a very specialized mission. The wing has a fleet of eight aging C-130H Hercules cargo/troop airplanes – down from 12 – that were built in 1989-1990.

The unit has the Department of Defense’s only large area – 5,000 acres or more – fixed-wing aerial spray capability to control disease-carrying insects, pest insects and undesirable vegetation, and to disperse oil spills in large bodies of water.

However, because of new flying regulations the planes need to be electronically updated with an “avoidance warning system” to continue flying in congested air space, such as the East Coast and Europe.

The Air Force has funded the compliance portion of updating the electronics of C-130H beginning this year that will allow the planes to meet the new regulations.

However, as we’ve said in the past, the desirable solution would be for the Pentagon to replace the aging fleet with the new C-130J cargo planes that are already being built.

There have been reports that the Pentagon wants more money in order to assign the new planes to the 910th Airlift Wing.

If that’s true, the additional funding President Trump is proposing for the Defense Department should take care of any financial barriers to the assignment of the new cargo/troop planes.