Clinton vs. Trump: Implications for defense.

• Author: Harper, Jon
• Position: Budget Matters

* Defense analysts expect that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would push for higher levels of defense spending if elected president, but it's less clear which programs would benefit or suffer during their tenure in the Oval Office.

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Both candidates have said they want to increase Pentagon funding beyond the amounts set by the Budget Control Act caps, which are slated to go back into effect in fiscal year 2018.

On her campaign website, Clinton called for "ending the sequester for both defense and non-defense spending in a balanced way."

She would also prioritize "defense reform initiatives, curbing runaway cost growth in areas like health care and acquisition, and stretching every dollar."

Trump has heavily criticized the Obama administration's national security policies and described the current state of the military as a "disaster."

"I'm going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong that nobody--absolutely nobody is going to mess with us," he said in a short video on his campaign website.

When it comes to topline spending, Michael O'Hanlon, co-director of the Center on 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution, said there might not be much daylight between the Democratic and Republican nominees.

"Both would like to argue that they're [planning on] improving the military," he said at a recent conference, noting that he supports Clinton in this election cycle.

"I would expect either one of those two potential presidents to spend a bit more than we're spending now [and] to advocate a military a bit larger and more expensive than the one President Obama favors."

For fiscal year 2017, the Obama administration requested $524 billion for the Pentagon's base budget, and an additional $59 billion for overseas contingency operations accounts, which are not included in the base budget or Defense Department budget projections. The five-year defense plan includes base budget spending of $557 billion in 2018, $565 billion in 2019, $570 billion in 2020 and $585 billion in 2021.

Those spending levels would exceed the Budget Control Act caps by about $113 billion over the course of the future years defense program, according to Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The BCA is probably the biggest challenge that the next administration faces, not just for defense, because it's for the non-defense side of...