President Biden was never gonna entertain deep ‘cuts’ in the Defense Budget….
If you have been listening to the media….(Hotspots of China and Russia along with Afghanistan and More including the pandemic)
Things just ain’t going in a way that money can be cut and sent to other places….
Republicans will want more money for the Pentagon and some Democrats will complain about moving around some money to other places….
The Defense budget needs 60 votes….
Biden’s initial budget number IS lower that Trump’s but slightly higher then the final numbers from Congress…..
Remember the final word /bill IS from Congress and the President signs off on that to make it official….
The Biden administration plans to request $715 billion for the Pentagon this coming year, a modest increase from the current level but below the level projected by the Trump administration in its final budget, according to three people familiar with the proposal.
That planned fiscal 2022 budget topline is up from the more than $704 billion allocated by lawmakers for this fiscal year. But it’s unlikely to satisfy factions of Republican defense hawks seeking to continue major increases in military spending, and progressive Democrats who want to enact steep cuts to the defense budget….
…
The Biden administration plans to request $715 billion for the Pentagon this coming year, a modest increase from the current level but below the level projected by the Trump administration in its final budget, according to three people familiar with the proposal.
That planned fiscal 2022 budget topline is up from the more than $704 billion allocated by lawmakers for this fiscal year. But it’s unlikely to satisfy factions of Republican defense hawks seeking to continue major increases in military spending, and progressive Democrats who want to enact steep cuts to the defense budget….
image…National Defense Magazine
Biden is becoming a borrow and spend Republican. The deficit is out of control and inflation is likely on the horizon.
President Biden is also sitting on a six figure jobless number and a still running pandemic….
And an increase in military spending will have less of a stimulus on the economy than an increase on infrastructure. So for example, an increase in military spending on our military bases in South Korea could more favorably impact the South Korean economy than ours.
Biden should be focusing on what’s important, and during these times especially, it is not the military.
“… Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
“It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
“It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
“It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
“We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
“We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
“This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
“These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953. …”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon the death of Josef Stalin
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/april-16-1953-chance-peace
That from a general…
The US Defense budget is over $700 Billion….
Most of that money goes to paychecks..
The other parts go mostly to things ya can’t eat….
There seldom is any major change in Defense budgets ….And any change never lasts…
James, sorry you are confused. Eisenhower was essentially suggesting that what we spend our money on has opportunity costs in that the money could have been used in other ways to benefit society. Now, we know that you are far more conservative than Eisenhower, but Eisenhower’s comments are difficult to refute.
In answer to what ‘Biden thinks is important’?
What Biden Values
Politico: “One of Biden’s all-time favorite sayings is ‘Don’t tell me what you value; show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.’”
“What Biden values, according to this plan, is a sharp break with the past when it comes to how Democrats think about federal spending. The White House is making it clear that fears about deficits are outdated, any pivot to austerity after the recent surge of spending is a non-starter, and the era of budget caps is over. Biden’s embrace of these views isn’t completely new, but it’s always been a little awkward for him to discuss because it’s an implicit admission of the failure of policies that defined the post-2010 Obama-Biden administration…”
“The Biden presidency is clearly a rejection of almost everything that Trump stood for, but what’s not often stated is that, when it comes to economic policy and federal spending, it’s also a rejection of much of what Barack Obama stood for as well.”
Politicalwire…
If Biden believes that deficits don’t matter, then he is a fan of the GOP’s borrow and spend philosophy. We don’t need two Republican Parties! One is more than what we need.
Even Larry Summers now thinks he was mistaken in not promoting a bolder, bigger stimulus in 2009 to overcome the Great Recession started under George W. Bush (author of the 2001 tax-cut-for-the-rich and Big Bang bank deregulation).
The political economy never replicates itself exactly, but I think that Biden is right to think that (as in the 1930’s) managing debt and deficit dangers have to give precedence to the need to correct or forestall a truly massive economic and industrial depression and dislocation.
The United States Government does NOT ‘have to balance’ its check book as long as it pays its bonds….
Great point DSD…..
Joe Biden is cleaning up Trump’s shit
People can be more than one thing. The Greece solution was a horrible failure!
Who is going to clean up Biden’s shit?
It is always easy to say what should have been done in retrospect.
We have inflationary pressures now that we did not have at the time of the Great Recession. Notably some people are being paid more NOT to work than to work. This has the effect of increasing demand, but it has an adverse impact on supply. When there is an increase in demand without an increase in supply, then inflation will likely occur.
And the unemployment rate now is much lower than it was during the bowels of the Great Recession.
Yellen wants MORE spending Worldwide….
Absolutely NO ONE except our blog friend is worried about inflation right now….
Remember when I said the US Military budget IS A Jobs program?
States where the most Americans serve in the military