Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said that the debt-ceiling deal’s provisions constraining military spending are “the worst part of the deal.”

He made the comments to reporters today, according to Politico.

While McConnell has expressed support for the deal, his comments reflect the skepticism held by many Republican lawmakers over its limits to defense spending over the next few years.

The current version of the deal would codify President Biden’s defense budget for the coming fiscal years. Although that would be a $45 billion increase from the previous year’s budget, Republican hawks have argued that it’s a de facto defense cut when inflation is taken into account. The $886 billion that Biden has asked to spend on the military is only 3.3 percent greater than the most recent defense budget.

Defense hawks have treaded carefully at this stage, even as some House lawmakers have vocally opposed the deal over what they say is an insignificant level of cuts to nondefense spending. Although McConnell seems poised to support the deal despite his criticism of its defense-spending limits, another senior GOP lawmaker, Senator Roger Wicker, told Bloomberg that he’s a “likely No” given the way that the deal handles defense.