Monday, November 30, 2020

Will The Biden Administration Cut The Defense Budget?

William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, The Nation: Will a Biden Administration Mean a Smaller Military Budget? 

Preventing future pandemics, and addressing long-standing inequalities, will require cutting our bloated Pentagon budget. 

Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes to how he handles this country’s highly militarized foreign policy in general and Pentagon spending in particular. 

Defense spending increased sharply in the Trump years and is now substantially higher than it was during the Korean or Vietnam War eras or during the massive military buildup President Ronald Reagan oversaw in the 1980s. Today, it consumes well over half of the nation’s discretionary budget, which just happens to also pay for a wide array of urgently needed priorities ranging from housing, job training, and alternative energy programs to public health and infrastructure building. At a time when pandemics, high unemployment, racial inequality, and climate change pose the greatest threats to our safety and security, this allocation of resources should be considered unsustainable. Unfortunately, the Pentagon and the arms industry have yet to get that memo. Defense company executives recently assured a Washington Post reporter that they are “unconcerned” about or consider unlikely the possibility that a Biden administration would significantly reduce Pentagon spending. 

Read more .... 

WNU Editor: The above authors are salivating at the prospect that the Biden administration will cut the US defense budget. I think it is too early to have those expectations.

8 comments:

  1. Don't do it, Joe!

    Although the Trump administration has run up such a bad deficit that spending has to be cut somewhere. And forgiving all that college debt is gonna hit the bottom line if they don't cut Defence spending.

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  2. 10:38 PM

    Yes because the Wuhan Flu is all Trump's fault, of course. And Trump is evil for not flinging $billions more at the whims of Pelosi, et. al.

    Why would Biden NOT cut defense? We're to assume he's unlike every other Democrat admin? Which cuts defense and while simultaneously adding to it's mission and scope?

    Remember, "America is back!" Ready to plunge into police actions and long-term (IE "forever") wars at the drop of a hat. And absorb all the costs too.

    /Africa definitely needs attention. Yemen needs some expanding and Syria REALLY needs a ramp up. Oh, and don't forget AFG. Gotta get back in there ASAP.

    /It's gonna be great!

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  3. "Defense spending increased sharply in the Trump years.."

    The above sentence tells me right there that William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger are idiots or liars.

    There are 3 things wrong right off the bat.

    First, they cannot calculate slope and assign an appropriate adjective to different slopes or they are liars.

    Second, how is Slow Joe going to cut defense it he keeps us in foreign wars? By cutting R&D and procurement. By hollowing out the force and thus make us weaker P2P. Have Hartung & Smithberger ever read a QDR? Trump was getting us out of wars. The would lower eliminate contingency spending on the military. It is not the biggest bucks but it is significant. Trump';s idea on military spending is surge and the coast. whereas Democrats are cut and OMG surge!

    Trump is not the one with the militarize foreign policy., The Deep State is.

    That is 3 strikes. Hartung & Smithberger are out. No one should read what those two write except in the Sunday paper.

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  4. get over it Russ
    You lost
    give the new folks a chance since America rejected your choice this time around

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    Replies
    1. The "new folks" really hahahaha!

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  5. Fred Lapides,

    Sean Hannity is wrong.

    First, the Trump family has committed no crime.

    Second, you would have to pardon for a specific crime. If the Dims have a specific crime against Jared or Ivanka, they should have charged it by now. They had 4 years.

    Third, any pardon the Dems say will only be for federal crimes. The Dems will invent state crimes.

    Fourth, the Dems are going to go after Trump and the Trump family pardons or no pardons. Might as well get this on. Either America survives or Lady Liberty is murdered by the Dems and America becomes a banana Republic ruled by Dims.

    The whole world is watching. Never again will anyone take Jimmy Carter and Americans seriously if the Steal is allowed to stand.

    In my view you, Fred, are parochial, back water, the hinterlands. I have relatives in France , Germany and Asia. I have extensively traveled. to very continent except Antarctica and Australia. You do not realize what is at stake here and how America will be seen. All you see is your Demoncrats winning.

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