For the second year in a row members of both parties have rejected President Biden’s proposed defense budget as insufficient.
Biden proposed a $773 billion for defense in the next fiscal year, a nominal 4% increase from 2022.
With inflation currently running at twice that level, the proposed budget actually represented a cut in defense spending.
The House on July 14 approved by a 329-101 vote an additional $37 billion more than Biden sought in military spending.
In a bipartisan blowout, 180 Democrats and 149 Republicans joined forces to pass legislation which authorizes defense spending levels and sets overarching military policy.
The Senate Armed Services Committee also passed an authorization for 2023 adding $45 billion to the Biden administration request.
These increases are aimed largely at mitigating inflation, crushing the Pentagon’s buying power.
The final Pentagon topline will have to be hammered out by House and Senate leaders in a compromise defense budget bill. And lawmakers must also pass an appropriation bill that makes the increase a reality.
Russia has invaded Ukraine on NATO’s borders and its military is mercilessly bombing civilian targets. Putin menaces NATO countries and talks of using nuclear weapons. An increasingly aggressive China is escalating its defense spending and already has the largest naval fleet in the world. It just signed a treaty of “friendship” with Russia.
Elsewhere, North Korea is testing missiles that can reach the U.S., Iran continues to be a malign actor in the Middle East and Islamist terrorist groups still threaten us.
Yet in the latest budget request for defense, Biden seeks to downplay the U.S. military role in national security, and the resources asked for are insufficient for even that diminished role.
The president’s budget would also shift money within the defense budget from military procurement to include new priorities such as climate change and global health.
The reality – even with the modest increases being authorized by Congress to the proposed Biden defense budget, it won’t change the trajectory of our managed military decline.
Biden proposed for 2023 the United States field a smaller Army, Navy and Air Force and spend half as much as a percentage of GDP (3%) than Americans did during the Cold War (5-6%). Is today’s world half as dangerous?
In post-Cold War America, it’s a myth the Pentagon is a bottomless pit for buying new weapons. Only about a quarter of the defense budget is spent on procurement, with the vast majority spent on personnel, maintenance, and benefits such as health care and retirement.
Both chambers included a 4.6% pay increase for service members but they lose ground with 8-9% inflation.
The Army’s end strength in both proposals falls to 473,000 from 485,000, as it struggles to fill openings.
Biden’s anemic shipbuilding budget proposed eight new ships – but retiring 24. The House bill, amended by Democrat Elaine Luria, authorizes five additional ships, including another destroyer and frigate, while keeping five combat ships off the retirement list.
Rather than follow the current path of shrinking our Navy, the U.S. needs a larger and more lethal sea service to counter China’s growing naval power advantage.
In 2017, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis estimated the Pentagon would need a sustained increase in annual, topline spending of 3 to 5% – above inflation, year after year – to reverse the relative decline in American power when compared to our adversaries.
Biden’s weak defense budget is another capitulation to the Democratic Party’s left-wing progressive bias against United States military hard power. America grows weaker even as its leader calls for more global activism.
Republican voices in Congress promote an “America First” foreign policy that would constrict U.S. deployments, aid and partnerships.
Someone needs to make the case for a major U.S. defense buildup in response to the challenges of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And, they need to do so soon.
Email Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.
