House Speaker Paul Ryan delivered a dire warning Thursday about the state of the U.S. military and urged Democrats to “stop playing politics” with the defense budget.

Declines in spending in recent years have left the military too small, over-worked, and saddled with aging aircraft that cannot fly, Ryan said during an address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

"[W]e have simply pushed our military past the breaking point," Ryan said. "Instead of upgrading our hardware, we have let our equipment age. Instead of equipping our troops for tomorrow’s fight, we have let them become woefully underequipped."

The strain has led to a spike in troop deaths, he said, delivering the speech as Congress wrestles with passing an overdue 2018 defense budget and spending hikes proposed by President Trump.

“In total, we lost 80 lives due to training accidents in 2017 — nearly four times as many [as were] killed in combat. Just think about that for a second,” Ryan said in a written copy of his remarks. “And the worst part is that these deaths may have been preventable. There is no excuse for that. We need to do better.”

The speaker said he has seen the state of the military first-hand in visits to U.S. bases and will travel to Iraq next week to meet with troops there.

Trump has requested a $54 billion increase over the $549 billion in base defense budget caps for this year and Congress also passed a 2018 defense authorization bill that blows past the cap by more than $80 billion.

But the defense budget is now more than three months overdue and there is no deal on raising the cap. Capitol Hill negotiations are still tangled up in a heated debate over immigration reform, new protections for about 800,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, and funding for Trump’s Mexico border wall.

The House was set to vote Thursday on another stopgap budget measure — the fourth since September — to give negotiations more time.

Ryan said he believes another two-year deal to raise the Budget Control Act caps is still possible and he called on Congress to move toward it. Such deals have been struck twice since the budget-cutting law was passed in 2011.

“An adequate budget agreement fully funds our troops. That means lifting the spending caps that disproportionately hamstring the defense budget, holding our national security hostage,” Ryan said. “The Pentagon cannot plan for the future if it keeps operating under short-term spending bills. The days of budgetary uncertainty and underfunding need to end.”

Ryan pointed the finger at Senate Democrats, who he said have stood in the way of appropriations legislation passed by the House.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has continued to demand new protections for the immigrants protected under the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He said on Wednesday that Democrats felt revulsion toward and were united against the stopgap budget measure being considered in the House.

“They need to stop playing politics with this,” Ryan said. “Our men and women in uniform are not bargaining chips. They are our nation’s best and brightest, who put their lives on the line for us.”