When Donald Trump was working during his transition to the White House — after the November 2016 election victory and before his inauguration on January 20, 2017 — he met with all the leaders in the Executive Branch of government to get the “lay of the land” from all those folks in the know. That certainly included the status of the United States military, its budget by various service branches, and the military’s infrastructure needs. So imagine the face-slap Mr. Trump took when U.S. generals reported to the “new” Commander-in-Chief that no branch of the military had ANY ammunition in stock for ANY of its weaponry!
Why was that the case in 2017? President Obama (with V.P. Biden) had stripped the military of its ability to purchase equipment necessary to maintain its readiness for an emergency of any kind and its ability to update its already outdated weaponry. Of course, in such a situation, previous U.S. militaries were provided by each administration sufficient funding to maintain its existing weaponry. Not so under Obama/Biden. In fact, during the eight years of their administration, the pair stripped the military of most of its might. All this occurred while our enemies abroad steadily enlarged their military infrastructures using new and innovative technology. In fact, our competing nations often rebuilt and/or added to their military arsenals with military equipment produced and sold by U.S. defense industry companies!
And we could not even perform fundamental and routine gun and rifle training for our Army troops: the Army had no funding to buy ammunition.
Trump immediately, upon taking office, made updating antique U.S. military hardware and growing our military’s infrastructure job #1. That including immediate pay increases for the men and women who served our nation that had languished for years with NO pay increases. Trump’s actions quickly brought us in line with our foreign foes on military readiness.
Now we have President Joe Biden. And he has introduced his fiscal year budget for the U.S. Regarding our military: his proposed budget is “Obama/Biden Military Suppression Part Two.”
The U.S. Gives China the World Military Dominance #1 Spot
We don’t know that for certain — yet. But it certainly appears that Biden’s military budget is a giveaway to China’s Xi Jinping.
President Joe Biden’s budget request for the fiscal year 2022 made it clear that defense isn’t his top priority at a time when the Chinese communist regime is building its military power and posing a threat to U.S. security interests.
The president’s budget for the fiscal year 2022, released on May 28, seeks $752.9 billion for national defense, $715 billion for the Pentagon. However, compared to the fiscal year 2021 budget, the requested amount for the Department of Defense in 2022 reflects only a 1.6 percent increase.
“Defense is not a Biden administration priority,” Elaine McCusker, a defense budget expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said on June 1 at a virtual event hosted by AEI. “Defense was the only federal function not even to keep pace with inflation, while domestic agencies went up by 16 percent, including a 41 percent increase for the Department of Education. Also of note, the only federal agency to take a cut at 10 percent was the Corps of Engineers.”
For example, according to the budget plan, the Department of Health and Human Services would receive a 23.4 percent increase. The Environmental Protection Agency would get a 21.6 percent boost in funding.
“And there is an attempt to redefine what constitutes a national security investment to divert defense funds to non-core activities,” McCusker said.
She pointed out there was no mention of military capabilities among critical investments under the heading “Confronting 21st Century Security Challenges” in the budget, while COVID-19 foreign assistance, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, and establishing a global health security agenda were among the administration’s commitments listed.
Similarly, there was no mention of “border security” in the budget proposal. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security stayed flat compared to the prior year. The budget proposal seeks to set aside more resources toward processing a higher volume of asylum cases and support up to 125,000 refugee admissions in 2022. The budget also provides $10 billion in humanitarian assistance to war victims and refugees abroad.
President Biden’s first budget request also reflects a shift in priorities when compared with budget proposals of former President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration’s budget takes a broader approach to national security, addressing threats such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and “extremism in the ranks,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
The budget would allocate more than $30 million to help the Defense Department improve capabilities to identify and address extremism among troops and enhance training.
Speaking at the event, Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that it’s hard to know the vision of the defense budget, as it hasn’t included the details of the five-year projections.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projections showed that the Defense Department budget would grow at a rate of 2.2 percent in nominal terms over the next five years, he noted. However, beyond the five-year period, budget growth would drop to 1 percent.
The good thing about the president’s budget for the fiscal year 2022, according to Harrison, is that it continues to boost the research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) funding. According to the Pentagon, Biden’s plan seeks $112 billion funding for RDT&E, which is the “largest-ever” request. This investment can put the U.S. military “in a place to modernize in the years to come and to build the types of capabilities that we need to compete effectively in the future,” Harrison said.
However, putting money into research and development may not necessarily lead to modernization and increased procurement in coming years, he said. “So we don’t see if that is their strategy right now,” Harrison said.
Budgets of the Air Force and Space Force were overall winners in Biden’s plan, compared to the Navy and the Army, he said. While the Navy’s topline budget would increase, the service’s shipbuilding and aircraft procurement funding would drop, according to the president’s budget proposal.
According to a Pentagon report last year, China has the largest navy globally, with an overall battle force of nearly 350 ships.
Under the Trump administration last year, the Pentagon initiated a program called Battle Force 2045 to address the China threat. The program called for a Navy of over 500 manned and unmanned ships. Biden’s budget showed that the plan has been rolled back.
Speaking at the AEI virtual event, John Ferrari, a retired U.S. Army major general and defense expert at the AEI, said he was “surprised the most by how the Navy and the administration walked away” from the Battle Force 2045 plan.
“I’m not sure how the Navy does move forward,” Ferrari said. “But, I think the Navy needs to be embracing innovation in the near term, given how long it takes to build ships.”
Inflation is also a big problem for the Pentagon’s budget, given the small increase projected by the OMB in the long term, Ferrari said.
“Inflation is the hidden danger that will eat the defense budget,” he said, noting that the inflation-protected U.S. savings bond is yielding 3.5 percent.
“So if that’s an anticipation of inflation of 3.5 percent, the department is in a lot of trouble.”
Summary
The above speaks for itself — you need no further explanation.
We need to be concerned that this president’s actions might lead to the same deterioration of our military at every level. It did not take Obama and Biden long to destroy the morale of our military members by summarily stripping them of all the essentials necessary to maintain our world military leadership. That certainly humiliated each of them.
Think about it: many of you reading this actually served in the U.S. military. And you probably served under a president that did not just “say” they supported you, they provided you and your fellow servicemembers with ALL they needed for their various jobs. And job #1 for you was to ready yourself to implement all actions necessary to keep all Americans and our country safe from ALL foes. That included every dollar necessary to do just that.
Keeping that in mind, how can today’s military members feel after hearing about this president’s plans for financial support for our nation’s defense?
Let’s push our lawmakers to tear up his budget requests. Instead, urge them to move sufficient revenue from the over-funded social projects included to keep the projects initiated during Trump’s presidency that have already resulted in remarkable improvements.
If we cannot accomplish that, get ready for YOUR children to have the drills at school that kids in the early 60s participated in regularly. What were they? When a horn sounded over school PA systems, students were taught to dive underneath desks and to “shelter in place” in the face of Soviet Union nuclear attacks!
It sounds far-fetched. But so did the threat in 2012 from Dr. Fauci and others of a certain upcoming pandemic. That’s here. And every day, we’re discovering that this one is more of a “plan-demic!”
