President
Joe Biden’s
fiscal 2024 budget finds much room for trillions of dollars in new programs. But even as a Chinese invasion of
Taiwan
looms, and Russia’s war in Europe continues, Biden seeks only a 3.19% increase in defense spending.
That’s a paltry sum.
WHAT MAX BOOT GETS WRONG ABOUT CHINA ALARMISM
Inflation is running at 6.4%, and the Congressional Budget Office predicts a 2024 inflation rate of around
2.4%
. This request is thus unlikely to provide any meaningful real terms increase in defense spending. It may even provide an effective defense cut after inflation is accounted for. Moreover, Biden’s request would drive up personnel costs by proposing a 5.2% wage hike for military and civilian Defense Department personnel. Those pay boosts, at least on the uniform military side, are well-deserved. The problem is that Biden’s request does not provide the fiscal space for those pay increases and boosts to defense capability.
Put simply, this is utter foolishness from the commander in chief. Congress will almost certainly increase the top-line figure. Biden shows a failure of leadership by dislocating this request from the world it confronts. This strategic disconnect has been a trend with the Biden administration, one most recently
evinced by the Pentagon’s Colin Kahl
.
Endorsing the budget request, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claimed it will allow him “to continue building a Joint Force that is the most lethal, resilient, survivable, agile, and responsive in the world.”
Really?
The details of this budget request will be published on Monday, but its top-line figure and committed pay increases already allow us to make a few confident conclusions.
For a start, when it comes to that “lethal” priority Austin described, the budget will lack the significant additional funding needed to engage in a massive buy of newer long-range anti-ship missiles,
such as the LRASM and JASSM-ER
, for example. Those weapons are needed to deter and defeat China. The purchase orders need to be made now if they are to have any hope of arriving before 2027, which most analysts believe will be a critical year of threat to Taiwan. The budget request’s headline figure also means it will lack industrial improvements
that are desperately needed
. This is especially important in terms of increasing the
Navy’s surface and undersea combatant fleets
and boosting the
Air Force’s strike fighter capacity
. Indeed,
details
of the AUKUS submarine deal due to be announced on Friday seem set to put even greater pressure on already-deficient U.S. submarine construction rates.
When it comes to Austin’s “responsive” and “agile” qualities, the Biden administration’s
stretching of already overstretched
naval and fighter forces between Europe and the Pacific is another major obstacle. Those deployments drive up maintenance needs and backlogs while reducing crisis readiness options. Again, this top-line defense request cannot possibly support the kind of resilient agility that Austin claimed it could deliver.
The one area where this budget might get a pass is in terms of “resilience.” Because if, as is likely, the Biden administration requests that the Navy be able to scrap its worse-than-useless littoral combat ships, it will be cronyists in Congress such as Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL)
who likely stand in the way
. The problem with capabilities such as the littoral combat ships is that they would be about as resilient in the face of Chinese anti-ship missiles as a baby deer would be in the face of a crocodile’s jaws (the aircraft carriers
are another
matter).
We’ll see what comes out on Monday. But at the headline level, this budget is utterly incompatible with confronting the threat China poses.
