ANALYSIS – President Joe Biden finally announced his proposed defense budget, very quietly on a Friday afternoon, intentionally drowned out by the long Memorial Day weekend a couple of weeks ago. Many observers missed it – as designed. This is a standard DC ‘swamp’ tactic to avoid the issue entering the news cycle.
As Kevin Baron, editor of Defense One noted, “If the White House wanted to boast about its [defense] spending plans, it wouldn’t have buried the news on Memorial Day weekend and given reporters just 10 minutes to ask questions.”
And Biden had reason to want his defense budget ignored. It is a woefully inadequate budget to face the multitude of growing external threats facing the United States. Think expansionist CCP China on a military building binge, Putin’s Russian military adventurism as close as Hawaii, and in the Arctic, space, and cyberwarfare, Iranian terrorism and possible nuclear weapons, and terrorism, etc., etc.
Yet, Team Biden has been absurdly touting ‘white supremacist extremists’ as the ‘number one threat’ to the homeland and ‘Climate Change’ as top national security threat.
In fact, the greatest threat to U.S. national security today is Biden’s 2022 defense budget.
Frederico Bartels, a senior policy analyst for defense budgeting in Heritage’s Center for National Defense, wrote in 19fortyfive:
When the Office of Management and Budget released its [total U.S.] 2022 budget request, President Joe Biden stated, “Where we choose to invest speaks to what we value as a Nation.”
On that basis, the Biden administration does not value the United States armed forces. [emphasis added]
While Biden is proposing an unprecedented and fiscally unsustainable $6.4 TRILLION national budget, the Pentagon will only get $715 billion, which is less, adjusted for inflation, than President Trump’s defense last budget. As Bartels notes:
Biden’s budget reflects more interest in an unprecedented expansion of the federal government than adequately funding the military. Priced at a whopping $6.4 trillion, this budget request, adjusted for inflation, costs more than World War II and one decade of Obamacare combined.
…If enacted as is, the Department of Education would have a 41% budget increase, the Environmental Protection Agency would have a 22% increase, and the Department of Defense would have a paltry 1.6% increase—less than the expected 2.2% inflation rate.
Most defense leaders believe the U.S. needs a defense budget that is consistently 3% to 5% above inflation for several years to be ready for great power competition, primarily with an increasingly dangerous and belligerent China, but also potentially with Russia.
Biden’s budget has effectively shrunk the Pentagon’s purchasing power when it could least afford it. Because of this, our military leaders were forced to make painful tradeoffs.
These tradeoffs included shrinking the Navy and Army at a time when both should be increased and cutting ‘legacy systems’ we need to fight a war today and tomorrow, to invest in future defense tech for a possible war ten years from now.
Bartels adds:
Further moving away from its mission of “providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security,” Biden’s budget proposes to carve out $500 million to go toward pandemic preparedness and $617 million to address, prepare, and adapt to climate change.
This is partially how the Biden administration is attempting to redefine the meaning of national security.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AmericanActionNews.com
Biden is as dumb as a box of rocks. The military needs the money more than there the EPA does. Stop these bull crap Biden and do your job properly and take care of our military.
Ok , Ok, enough with the insults to the box of rocks . A box of rocks at least has some use . Biden is about as useful as Sox on a Pig .
Thinking of retard joe I can imagine a use for a box of rocks
The question is, Mr. Crespo, what do we do when there is a demented, demonstrable traitor in the White House? It’s a question more important than the typical military question of angels on a pin.
LISTEN UP…The U.S. MILITARY Deserves the BEST of EVERTHING. SO WHY is the US. GOVT Throwing SCRAPS at THEM????? I was RAISED in the MILITARY By an AIRFORCEMAN. From SamuraiQueen. 😄😄😄
They need good weapons (Unlike the F-35, F-22 and B-2, though the latter at least has some operational combat usage) But what is vitally important to the military is morale. America can field very sophisticated military hardware, but if our troops are demoralized, disillusioned and prone to resign from the military, all those gizmos will be rendered useless. You can imagine the crushing disappointment our soldiers experienced when they returned from combat tours in Vietnam, only to be spat upon, berated and shunned by war weary Americans who called them “Baby Killers”. Those brave soldiers had to endure an environment even more disheartening than the combat zones they left. Trying to ‘equalize’ military ranks with speech codes and behavioral policies to protect women and minorities has done little more than pit men against women among the ranks, while furnishing blacks (And now, homosexuals) with a BIG CHIP to place on their shoulders, and they regularly campaign to provoke non-minority troops to knock it off. This is not a military capable of protracted, arduous combat. They’re too busy complying with social engineering mandates and conciliatory Rules of Engagement, while they deal with useless junk to conduct their missions with.
Where gonna have a bunch of gays in the service.
Climate change is the deadliest straw man hoax ever dreamed up by crypto-socialists to advance their world domination. They would demonize carbon dioxide, without which the vegetable world cannot live and cannot synthesize oxygen for animals to breathe. Oh and by the way, CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas as it is on Venus. The concentration of CO2 is well buffered on Earth by living systems and has changed little in decades. THe concept of ‘global warming’ was projected by a pie-in-the-sky academic computer model. And as everyone knows about computers: garbage in, garbage OUT.
Time to bring back the true Bossman. President Donald J. Trump. Enough of the circus clowns pretending to Run (Sorry RUIN) the Country
Kamila Harris is not qualified to be VP as you can see . Very concerning to Americans
She did America a favor, in a manner of speaking. Women thought they had the nation by its ‘balls’ when Hillary was a shoe-in for the presidency. There was no way in Hell that Donald Trump would win that election, and we would have had our first female chief executive (That and ten bucks would get you a coffee at Starbuck’s) The shock of Hillary losing that race was so profound, virtually every female was screaming to the rafters about their loss. (Believe me, we dodged a 300 caliber bullet in the wake of that election) It was almost a foregone conclusion that Biden would not only include a woman as his running mate, but that liberals would ensure they won in 2020. Now we have a woman in the White House. The country has quieted down considerably (She’s also black, so she filled THAT square, too) Now the final goal to arrange Kamaltoe’s access to the throne will be implemented, once Numb Nuts has been removed under the 25th Amendment, or he dies. (Do you know why liberals live so long? If you knew where they were going, you’d hold it off as long as possible.) When that occurs, even those celebrating women will quickly learn the folly of electing officials on the basis of “Identity Politics”.