Is Now The Time To Cut The U.S. Defense Budget?

Wikipedia

Fred Kaplan, Slate: Now Is the Time to Cut the Defense Budget

Let’s figure out how to do it responsibly.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is worried that the COVID-19 crisis might waylay his plans to increase the military budget. No kidding. But the way Esper formulated the problem shows he isn’t remotely prepared to deal with it.

Esper said on Monday that “we need 3 to 5 percent annual real growth” in the defense budget. Since this year’s budget amounts to $740 billion, he’s talking about increasing it by $22 billion to $37 billion—for a total, next year, of up to $777 billion, or actually a bit more than that, since he called for that much “real growth,” meaning growth beyond the level of inflation.

Yet, Esper added, he is “concerned” that the government’s $3 trillion infusion into the economy, to keep the country and its people alive during the lockdown, “may throw us off that course.”

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WNU Editor: What U.S. policy makers and their political masters should first do is have a debate on what are the U.S. national security priorities, what resources will be necessary to fulfill them, and then allocate the funds and programs. It does not make sense to me to cut the budget, and then mandate the Pentagon to try and fulfill what are the priorities of the U.S. government with the resources that they have (or may not have).

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