Defense Writers Group
4 June 2025
Moderator: Good morning everyone, and welcome to a very special Defense Writers Group. Our guest today is Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and it’s coming at a really important time.
The ground rules: As always, this is on the record. You can record it for accuracy of quotes, but there’s no rebroadcast of audio or video. I have quite a few advance requests for questions, we’ll get to as many as we can. Others please drop in direct chat.
For those of you who were watching their email in-basket at six p.m. last night you saw that Chairman Wicker released his reconciliation measure that would add more than $156 billion to the DoD budget for this year.
We’re incredibly honored he’s chosen Defense Writers Group for his first public engagement on that.
Mr. Chairman, welcome, sir. We’re honored to have you. The floor is yours for your opening comments to sort of tell us your priorities and what’s next, sir.
Senator Wicker: We are of course going to stay within the $150 billion ceiling that we have. We’ve had to make a few adjustments based on scoring and [the] parliamentarian over here, but we will comply with the instructions of the Senate Resolution.
Thank you for doing this. I hope it’s a good exercise for you.
