Sullivan backs Trump’s 40 percent military increase, with no taxes to pay for it

Elbridge Colby, 46, a high-ranking official in the Department of Defense, testified March 3 before a Senate committee and mentioned how much he appreciates Sen. Dan Sullivan’s support to raise annual military spending to $1.5 trillion.

“I know you’ve been a leader on that sir,” Colby told Sen. Dan Sullivan.

“Yeah,” said Sullivan, who is running for re-election against former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola.

What we haven’t heard from Sullivan, a charter member of the Senate DOGE Caucus, is what taxes he supports to pay for the largest military budget in U.S. history, which features an increase of more than 40 percent. Trump introduced the proposal Friday.

The Trump plan endorsed by Sullivan would add $7 trillion to the national debt by 2036, according to this analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The Trump plan includes what the committee calls a “fantastical 3% annual growth over the next decade without any information to back it up.”

Trump’s fantasy budget proposes cutting $73 billion from government services, as the New York Times put it, including money meant to respond to natural disasters, train new teachers, root out tax fraud, research cures for diseases and develop clean energy technology.

Trump puts higher military spending above all else, according to comments he made at a private lunch that his employees mistakenly made public.

Trump said he told OMB Director Russell Vought to include no money for day care because it is not a federal priority. He said states should raise taxes for day care and health care.

“I said to Russell, ‘Don’t send any money for day care,’ because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state,” Trump said. “We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people.”

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal,” Trump added. “We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place — you have to let states take care of them, Russell,” Trump said.

Sullivan voted for a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid last summer under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a bill that Sullivan continues to misidentify as the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act,” a name invented after the beautiful bill moniker proved became political poison. Sullivan thinks a tax cuts act sounds better.

Sullivan claims the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts will not harm Alaskans because of special provisions in the bill. About 9,000 Alaskans are expected to lose Medicaid coverage under the beautiful bill.

In a March 4 hearing, Sullivan said “a number of us” have been asking Trump to back a large military spending increase. He cheered the $1.5 trillion scheme.

Is $1.5 trillion “the kind of number that can, if utilized well, can help clear your to-do list from the Government Accountability Office” and make the United States military as ready as it should be?

He asked that question, clearly hoping that the answer would be “yes,” from Diana Maurer, director of the GAO defense capabilities office, but she refused to play along.

She said “how the money is used is arguably even more important than the amount of that money.”

Thanks to Trump we now know going into Sullivan’s campaign that day care, Medicaid and Medicare are not important federal priorities. The federal government is spending more than $1 billion a day on Trump’s war, which Sullivan supported from the moment it began.

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