As the next budget is being shaped, the Chinese spy balloon situation has put a crimp in talks of reducing military spending.
"The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we've ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said after the classified briefing this week, The Hill reported. "We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them.
"I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases."
Republicans have been calling for reducing wasteful spending by the Biden administration, including billions being sent to fund Ukraine's war effort through the Defense Department, but China's latest provocations might be changing that tune, according to the report.
"Having a strong robust national security is essential to deterring bad behavior," Sen. Republican Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said, according to The Hill. "I think it's OK to try to find savings and do the audits and do all that sort of thing to become more efficient, but just willy-nilly saying we're going to cut defense, I think would be a mistake."
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., agreed.
"There is no way that we should be looking at defense cuts right now," he said. "We're probably going to need more and not less with regard to that. The primary responsibility of the Congress of the United States is the defense of our country and this one is a serious threat."
President Joe Biden wants Republicans on board with raising the debt ceiling, after arguing in his State of the Union he was acting to reduce the national debt. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said raising the debt ceiling would have to align with spending cuts, and most Republicans want that to be domestic spending and not defense.
"I don’t mind reforming the Defense Department and doing away with certain programs," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "I want to apply it back into the defense budget and put it in other areas. We need a bigger Navy.
"I don't think anybody believes our Navy and our military footprint west of the international dateline is sufficient to deter China."
But one of the Senate's leading budget hawks, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., says all spending needs to curtail and those taking cuts to defense off the table "are just not serious about trying to do anything about the debt."
"All spending would have to be on the table in order to have any kind of real hope of assessing the debt," Paul said, according to The Hill. "This came up with the omnibus at the end of the year and the question was: 'Which is more important for our national security, adding $45 billion in military spending or having a $31 trillion debt?'
"From the perspective of fiscal hawks like myself, the $31 trillion in debt is more of a danger to our national security."
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