May 10, 2023 Topic: U.S. Military
Answered: Ten Major Questions about America’s 2024 Defense Budget
The real state of America’s military can be measured via its spending priorities.
by Lawrence J. Korb Follow @LarryKorb on TwitterL
Since dollars are policy in U.S. national security, it is not surprising that, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the increasingly aggressive Chinese behavior toward Taiwan, and the escalating federal deficit, the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY2024) defense budget proposed by the Biden administration has provoked comments from all parts of the political spectrum. To put these comments in perspective, it is important to analyze at least ten major questions that, as we previously noted, President Joe Biden had to answer in formulating his proposed defense budget.
First, in deciding on the size of his FY2024 defense budget increase, would Biden use the $813 billion he originally proposed for FY2023 as a base? Or would Biden use the $860 billion, which was approved in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2023?
For FY2024, Biden used the latter—the congressionally approved FY2023 level of $858 billion—as a base and proposed a total budget for FY2024 of $886 billion, an increase of 3.2 percent. Had he used his $813 billion as a base, his budget proposal would have amounted to $47 billion less. Even if Congress does not add to his FY2024 proposal, which appears unlikely, this would mean that, since the Biden administration came into office, the defense budget will have grown by $146 billion, or 20 percent. This is exclusive of the military assistance to Ukraine, which now amounts to over $50 billion, and nearly all of the weapons going to Taiwan. Moreover, it does not include the $100 billion the federal government spends each year amortizing the military retirement system and the approximately $325 billion the Veterans Administration will spend in FY2024. As the Pentagon comptroller noted, the United States is inevitably moving toward a trillion-dollar defense budget.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/answered-ten-major-questions-about-america%E2%80%99s-2024-defense-budget-206465
