Paul Ryan: US military is deteriorating and hollowed out

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan Tuesday said the military is a top priority in his 2019 budget plan during an exclusive interview on FOX Business with Maria Bartiromo.

“What we have to make sure is that we don’t hollow out our military, and there was a serious problem with our military that needed addressing,” he said on “Mornings with Maria.” “When you are getting a bipartisan compromise, sometimes there is spending you have to accept to get what you need in order to do that, and our priority was getting the military the budget they needed.”

Ryan also stressed the ongoing threats to national security. “You know the threats we have in this country, in this world. We have ISIS we have the rise in China and Russia. We have serious duress that we have to deal with, and our military is seriously under duress” he said.

Ryan has called for bipartisan support for his bill that includes a number of priorities; military funding, disaster aid and the repeal of an ObamaCare advisory board to name a few. It also cuts $3 trillion in spending over the course of 10 years.

“We are very sincere about wanting the cuts. We are sincere about government programs. We are sincere about wanting to cut a lot of foreign aid that goes to people who are actually fighting against America’s best interests,” he said. “At the same time we have a priority to rebuild our military.”

Ryan also pointed out how health-care entitlements are the “real driver of debt.”

“We have a structural deficit increase because of our entitlement spending. And the biggest driver of it is healthcare entitlements. This is why one of the biggest casualties of a narrow senate, that bill not passing was not getting health care entitlement reform. We have to reform our healthcare entitlements that is why we can never give up reforming health care” he stressed.

When Bartiromo asked Ryan about revisions and cut recommendations to the budget from President Trump, he replied, “We always take the president’s budgets very seriously, and then Congress writes its own budgets,” and added that the sequester and spending caps are putting the military in dire straits.