WASHINGTON _ Donald Trump's plan to strengthen the military and battle terrorism, unveiled Wednesday, is aimed at showing America he'd be a tough, knowing commander in chief. That's going to be a hard sell. And it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to pay for.
Trump outlined his proposal in a speech in Philadelphia a few hours before he and Hillary Clinton appear back-to-back on NBC and MSNBC to discuss national security.
The speech and the Democratic reaction were a preview of what's to come. Trump talked tough: "I am proposing a new foreign policy focused on advancing America's core national interests, promoting regional stability and producing an easing of tensions in the world," he pledged.
To do that, he said he'd end the limits, or sequester, on defense spending and direct the military to come up a plan within 30 days to defeat the Islamic State. But he was short on specifics, and his plans to pay for his military buildup are largely ideas that were discredited long ago.
Trump is eager to establish credentials as a leader who can steer foreign policy in a reasonable way. A CNN/ORC survey Sept. 1-4 found that by 56-36 percent, voters saw Clinton as having the proper temperament to be president. They also said, by 50-45, that she is better suited to be commander in chief. Clinton, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, had a decided advantage in handling foreign policy.
Trump has an opening, though. The poll found he gets higher marks than Clinton on leadership and the ability to handle terrorism.
Wednesday, he methodically listed countries where he said the Obama administration had helped create chaos. What's more, he said, President Barack Obama and Clinton "have also overseen deep cuts in our military, which only invite more aggression from our adversaries."
Military spending is now about $600 billion annually, an amount limited by the 2013 budget agreement that created the sequester. Trump's plans would reportedly cost about $500 billion over 10 years. There's widespread support, including backing from Clinton and Obama, for ending the sequester.
Trump said he would pay for the military buildup by eliminating federal waste, fraud and abuse, a concept that politicians have cited for decades as a painless way to cut spending but that has routinely either been rejected or fallen far short of the goals. He spoke of "common-sense reforms that eliminate government waste and budget gimmicks."
"Any sort of major military buildup can't be done through waste, fraud and abuse or uncollected taxes," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.
"It's just not out there," he said, "and besides that, Trump has a tax cut plan on the table."
Bixby noted that Trump has already promised to preserve social programs such as Medicaid, in part, by cutting waste, fraud and abuse.
Another Trump idea is to cut the federal workforce through attrition. A 2013 Congressional Budget Office study of an attrition plan projected about $42 billion in savings over 10 years.
But, the agency warned, the cuts "would probably reduce the quality and quantity of some of the services provided and could have other negative effects," notably an increase in fraud and abuse of government programs.
Trump needs the money to build an Army of about 540,000, up about 50,000 from what he termed current levels. He'd build a Marine Corps based on 36 battalions, up from what he said was 23 today. And a Navy with 350 surface ships and submarines. Current strength is 276 ships.
His Air Force would include at least 1,200 fighter aircraft, up from 1,113, and he'd aim to develop a state-of-the-art missile system. His numbers come from a variety of sources, including military officials and conservative research groups.
What's unusual is that Trump is advocating a larger military while he's talked about U.S. allies bearing a greater burden, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump has talked about drastically changing the U.S. relationship with NATO if allied countries don't pay their contractual fair share in the security pact. During the Republican primaries, he also talked about Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia having nuclear weapons to better defend themselves.
"The odd thing is Trump is advocating this," Cancian said. "Trump has talked about putting more responsibilities on our allies. He's in line with other Republicans have proposed, but not consistent with the strategies that he's proposed."
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was skeptical. "A lot of this seems to become a laundry list of things, not a system that is geared in the latest developments in warfare _ integrating aircraft, protecting ships from cyber-intrusion, not just buildup," he said.
Clinton has taken a different approach to boosting military strength, stressing working with allies and using diplomacy to defuse tension. She says the U.S. should be "firm but wise with our rivals."
Her plan for defeating the Islamic State includes intensifying the air campaign against their strongholds in Iraq and Syria and boosting support for Arab and Kurdish ground forces. She urges diplomacy as important to ending Syria's civil war and closing Iraq's sectarian divide.
