A Troubling Outlook for Future Defense Spending
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By Luke Strange
November 06, 2018
In the final days of planning for the 2020 defense budget, the White House dropped a bomb on the Pentagon: a 33 billion dollar cut. This move captured the attention of defense observers, but once the Pentagon puts that trouble behind it, 2021 promises yet more trouble ahead. Trends both inside and outside of the defense spending debate point to a backlash against rising deficits on the horizon. And if even more significant defense cuts accompany the next round of deficit reduction, as they have in the recent past, Congress risks devastating the US military just as it rebuilds and retools for competition against other great powers.
The Pentagon is currently funded under a full-year defense appropriations act, thanks to topline spending levels set in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. This is the third in a series of 2-year “fixes†to the 2011 Budget Control Act’s artificially low discretionary spending levels. Congress passed the first “fix†in 2013, and the 2018 deal represents the largest defense budget increase provided by Congress so far. These deals have spared the military from some of the worst damage, but Congress has only just begun to allow the rebuilding of military capacity, rather than plugging holes and filling gaps.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/11/06/a_troubling_outlook_for_future_defense_spending_113942.html
