Jim Hartman: Biden’s inadequate defense budget

In opening his State of the Union Address, President Biden compared 2024 to 1941 as a year of critical danger for freedom worldwide, invoking President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1941, President Roosevelt more than quadrupled defense spending. Nothing could be further from Biden’s plan.

Biden has proposed a defense budget for 2025 that is vastly inadequate. It’s a mere 1% increase over 2024. That’s a cut after inflation, the fourth cut in a row.

But the world is on fire.

Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine to extend Russian power could still succeed. Putin hints at greater ambitions.

Israel was brutally attacked and is now fighting a war of survival.

An Iranian proxy in Yemen shoots rockets at U.S. troops and closes Red Sea shipping, while another Iranian proxy fires missiles into Israel.

North Korea is beefing up both nuclear and conventional forces aimed at South Korea, which the U.S. is bound to defend.

China has announced a 7.2% increase in defense spending and threatens Taiwan with a rapidly expanding naval fleet, already the largest in the world by ship count.

From Biden’s catastrophically bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan to the delay in sending advanced weapons to Ukraine, the message repeatedly sent to friends and foes alike is the U.S. is a declining power easily cowed and in retreat.

Biden is telling the world that America is cutting defense in real terms even as threats of war increase on every side.

Under his proposed 2025 defense budget, the U.S. Army will shrink by 43,000 troops from the 2022 level, to 442,000. Reducing the force is no substitute for fixing the underlying problem, which is a struggle to find recruits.

The U.S. Navy will purchase only six ships and retire 10 early, which would shrink the fleet to 287 ships in 2025 from 296 today.

Most egregiously, the Biden administration will purchase only one Virginia-class attack submarine, instead of a planned two. U.S. submarine technology gives us a true advantage over the rapidly expanding Chinese naval fleet.

Buying only one boat tells adversaries the U.S. is not serious about rearming. The U.S. needs to build 2.3 subs a year to meet the Navy’s needs.

Russia is fielding anti-satellite weapons that threaten our homeland. The U.S. needs to diversify and harden its satellites in space, yet the Biden budget cuts the Space Force by $600 million.

Biden proposes overall spending of $7.3 trillion in 2025, which is an increase of $1.1 trillion in two years, that’s 18%. From that, the Pentagon gets only $850 billion, which is a real cut in military muscle after inflation.

It’s a budget fantasy that ignores the world’s realities. It incites our enemies to step up their war plans.

This budget sets the U.S. military on a course of managed decline. U.S. defense spending is estimated at 3.1% of GDP this year and will fall to 2.4% of the economy in 2034.

By comparison, the U.S. spent nearly 6% of GDP during the 1980’s when the U.S. was rearming to win the Cold War.

Interest on the national debt will cost more than the U.S. spends on defense this year, and the gap will continue to widen.

The federal government gives more cash to state and local governments (e.g. Medicaid money) than it spends on its own defense.

The political class in Washington is failing at its most important duty, which is providing for the nation’s defense. Congress is mired in dysfunction with both chambers unable to pass an appropriation even for fiscal 2024 until last month.

President Reagan demonstrated that only a resolute commander-in-chief can persuade a war-weary public and a wary Congress to support sustained investment in national security.

The next president will face a multitude of problems, but rebuilding the nation’s military must be the top priority.

E-mail Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.