Feast to Famine: Nine Recommendations for Maintaining American Military Primacy with Reduced Funding
Charles Dvorak | 02.24.21
Feast to Famine: Nine Recommendations for Maintaining American Military Primacy with Reduced Funding
When it comes to budgets, the question is not if the Department of Defense will experience reduced funding, but how soon and by how much? The US military, it has been argued, is better suited to weather huge swings in funding than most other government institutions. The budget sequestration triggered in 2013 might seem to be the prime example of that assertion. Though the Department of Defense was not the only entity to suffer drastic drops in funding or experience lasting impact from that jarring exercise, it (arguably) came out the other side as a still-capable force. Operational ready rates suffered and exercises to certify units at all tactical levels were disrupted, but the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines by no means ceased to be a formidable force in the world. However, the short-lived sequestration was only a rehearsal for what all beneficiaries of federal discretionary funding will endure in the coming decades.
The numbers are clear. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the best source of data describing the impact of US economic and political vicissitudes on federal revenues and outlays. CBO regularly produces projections across most facets of the government to give lawmakers, officials, and the general public an idea of where the budget is heading up to thirty years into the future. Notably, the most recent thirty-year projection has some stark realities for the Department of Defense.
https://mwi.usma.edu/feast-to-famine-nine-recommendations-for-maintaining-american-military-primacy-with-reduced-funding/
