Military Threats Are Growing, But Military Spending May Not Follow Suit

Loren Thompson

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Overseas threats to U.S. security have steadily increased during the Biden presidency. No one expected when Joe Biden was inaugurated that three years in, Washington would be:

• Aiding Ukraine in resisting a Russian invasion
• Supporting Israel in defeating Hamas terrorism
• Absorbing scores of assaults on troops in the Middle East
• Forming a task force to defeat attacks in the Red Sea
• Countering Chinese military pressure on Taiwan
• Responding to North Korean threats of nuclear aggression.

The deteriorating security situation seems to call for increased spending on defense. The nation is currently allocating only 3% of GDP to the military, which isn’t enough given the array of security commitments Washington has taken on around the world.

There are numerous signs that the Pentagon’s budget is inadequate. Arms deliveries to embattled allies are lagging. Recruiting drives are falling short of goals despite loosened standards. Equipment maintenance is not keeping up with needs, while acquisition of new systems is not matching the pace of Chinese weapons production.

However, the outlook for significant increases in defense spending in the years ahead is not promising. The Pentagon may need to rethink its posture and priorities. Four obstacles to further spending increases loom large.

First of all, the military has already received outsized increases in funding over the last several years. When President Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the defense department’s base budget stood at $523 billion. President Biden’s request for the fiscal year beginning October 1 was $842 billion. That’s a 61% increase in nominal terms over seven years.

If the 2017 levels of spending had increased at the same pace as inflation during the intervening years, the base budget request in 2024 would have been for $675 billion rather than $842 billion. The difference is real growth, and that doesn’t even include supplemental funding for contingencies such as Ukraine.

This is a remarkable rate of increase for a democracy not engaged in a major war, and yet the armed forces look increasingly overstretched. A possible implication is that the defense department is not allocating resources efficiently.

A second factor impeding future defense increases is the structural deficits that have driven cumulative national debt to $34 trillion as of last week. When George W. Bush took office as chief executive in 2001, fiscal trends were so positive that the Congressional Budget Office was projecting federal debt held by the public would fall below a trillion dollars in 2010. Instead, it stands today at $27 trillion, thanks to big tax cuts, rising entitlement costs, a global pandemic and other factors.

Not surprisingly, the rapid pace of federal borrowing has become a political issue. Republicans challenging the Biden record—which includes $2 trillion in new deficit spending during 2023—are determined to restrain spending. However, they are focused mainly on discretionary outlays rather than entitlements, and defense is by far the biggest component of discretionary spending.

With the Pentagon having received sizable budget increases in recent years, it is inevitable that members of both parties concerned about “out of control” spending will begin focusing on how military dollars are spent.

A third factor at work in the current environment is that public opinion does not strongly support robust military spending. A survey of foreign policy attitudes conducted by Beacon Research for the Ronald Reagan Institute last fall found that only 3% of respondents considered national defense to be a big concern.

Moreover, popular support for the Biden administration’s most visible overseas military exertions is waning. A Pew Research Center survey finds 31% of adults believe too much money is being spent on the war in Ukraine, way up from 7% when the war began. Meanwhile, a December New York TimesNYT +0.2%-Siena College survey reported 57% of adults do not support the administration’s handling of the Israeli military operation in Gaza—and that’s before Israel potentially expands the scope of conflict to include Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

Past experience indicates that when overseas military missions become unpopular, support for defense spending suffers. In general, Americans are much more focused on domestic concerns than overseas threats.

A fourth factor potentially impacting military spending is the functioning of U.S. political culture during what the Almanac of American Politics describes as “a time of hyper-partisanship and tribalism.” Assembling a majority in Congress for even the most necessary legislative acts has become a challenge. A case in point was the agreement to raise the debt limit known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which imposed potential ceilings on all discretionary spending as a condition for keeping the government open.

Specifically, Congress must pass all 12 appropriations bills for fiscal 2024 by April 30 in order to avoid cuts to the president’s budget request. If this does not occur, then defense spending broadly defined would be held to an amount 1% below the enacted level in 2023. In other words, the proposed funding level of $886 billion for the defense department, energy-department nuclear weapons programs, and other defense-related items would be cut $36 billion.

This would wreak havoc with military modernization plans. If the Pentagon has the latitude, it would likely prioritize the most critical modernization efforts, such as the Virginia-class submarine and the B-21 bomber. If, on the other hand, the department finds itself operating under a full-year continuing resolution, then funding levels for everything would be frozen in place at prior-year levels (perhaps less 1%) and no new programs could commence.

Can this be avoided? At the moment no one knows, because the functioning of partisan alignments is so unpredictable. Many players are more focused on the debt and border security than they are on whether the Pentagon gets a budget increase. It’s a volatile time, with few signs of encouragement for the nation’s struggling military.