Biden’s Budget Proposal Gives Meager Boosts to Defense and Diplomacy
What the $7.3 trillion plan says about the U.S. president’s priorities.
By Jack Detsch, Robbie Gramer, and Amy Mackinnon
MARCH 14, 2024, 4:54 PM
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. For those of you who missed the Oscars over the weekend, you also missed a commercial during the movie awards promoting AUKUS. (Here’s hoping French officials didn’t tune in.)
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: What Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget plan says about the administration’s defense priorities, Russia puts nuclear weapons closer to NATO soil, and the U.S. Congress puts TikTok on the clock to boot its Chinese owners.
The Biden Budget Battle
U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a massive $7.3 trillion federal budget plan that includes only marginal increases for defense, diplomacy, and foreign aid as the administration feels pressure from foreign-policy hawks on one side and budget hawks on the other.
Under Biden’s proposal, the U.S. defense budget would go up by 1 percent. U.S. troops would get a 4.5 percent pay raise. The Pentagon wants to field 10 long-range hypersonic weapons. It’s hoping to harden ballistic missile defenses around the island of Guam, home to a U.S. base that would almost certainly be a major Chinese target if the superpowers were to ever go head-to-head. And it wants to buy more stealthy B-21 bombers that should be ready to fly in a few years.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/14/biden-budget-defense-military-diplomacy-congress/
