Penny plan destroys readiness and causes global challenges to US leadership.
Elaine McCusker 3/10, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, previously served as acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller) at the Defense Department, “Don’t be fooled by Biden’s budget: He’s CUTTING military spending as our needs grow,” New York Post, 3/10/23, https://nypost.com/2023/03/10/bidens-budget-hes-cutting-military-spending/
These cuts also come at a time when our military is facing growing global challenges. The Wall Street Journal editorial board summed up the threat environment: “China is building a world-class military to drive America out of the Pacific. Russia is committed to grinding down Ukraine and then moving its military to the Polish border; Iran may soon have a nuclear bomb; North Korea is lobbing missiles toward Japan. Hypersonics and missiles threaten the U.S. homeland.”
The latest assessment from the combatant command in charge of the Indo-Pacific region documents its need for $15.4 billion in fiscal year 2024 to address the growing challenge from China.
The DOD Pacific Deterrence Initiative request in the Biden budget falls far short of this need at just $9.1 billion.
And Biden proposes to essentially cut defense while at the same time requesting large increases for non-defense discretionary spending, including hikes for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation of about 19% and the Departments of Agriculture and Education of around 14%.
Two examples convey President Joe Biden’s priorities.
The budget proposes to quadruple international climate finance and establish another new US International Development Finance Corp. “equity” revolving fund to make “investments” to “empower early and growth-stage companies from low and lower-middle income countries.”
I guess the Biden administration plan is to just leave the US military and the growth-stage companies that support it to make do with below-stagnant level investments.
The administration also proposes a 15% increase for the Treasury in part to “improve the taxpayer experience.”
I know what would improve my experience as a taxpayer: lower taxes and less of my tax money going to activities that have nothing to do with military capability.
Yet apparently ramping up the ability to collect more taxes is a higher priority than deterring the nation’s adversaries and building a sufficiently sized and capable military to protect the people who pay those taxes.
No doubt a few bright spots in the defense-budget request will be important to evaluate and discuss once programmatic details are available.
But the continued mismatch between strategy and funding that forces destructive tradeoffs between capacity and capability and that weakens overall military competitiveness eclipses those positives.