President Biden’s budget request, released this morning, asks Congress for a combined $813 billion in defense spending for the next fiscal year—which, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is 4 percent larger than the defense budget approved by Congress for this year.
The latest proposal, however, is likely the floor for the amount that Congress will end up appropriating.
Above all else, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s continued threats to Taiwan have boosted the political viability of a larger defense-spending proposal. With all eyes on U.S. efforts to support Ukraine and to shore up the security of frontline NATO allies, the president just doesn’t need to attempt to placate progressives, as he did last year, with an initial lowball proposal that Congress ignored.
Key members of Congress are already out the gate with pledges to approve more for the military than what Biden proposed this morning.
Representative Mike Rogers, the GOP ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, called the budget proposal “wholly inadequate.” He pointed to an argument that is sure to gain traction in the coming debate around defense spending: “Most importantly, this budget fails to account for the record high inflation that is wreaking havoc on our nation. My colleagues and I were clear with President Biden: our warfighters need a defense budget that is 5% above the rate of inflation.”
Rogers’s demand for an increase in defense spending that is 5 percent above inflation leaves a large gap with Biden’s current budget proposal: The rate of inflation rose to 7.9 percent in February.
More Republicans are certain to take up this point as a line of attack against Biden’s handling of national security. That doesn’t mean Democrats won’t work with them to buck the White House’s proposal — last year, Congress opted for $782 billion in defense spending, significantly more than what the White House initially proposed.
Still, the defense budget is unlikely to reach $1.5 trillion this year, the figure that former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger recently advocated as necessary to win the new cold war, or even $1 trillion, the number at the center of an ongoing debate at National Review.
But the political winds are shifting here, as the Ukraine crisis has reminded Americans of the growing threats posed by its great-power adversaries. We’re not far from the point at which a $1 trillion military budget could be politically feasible — but we’ve almost certainly passed the point at which we need such a level of defense spending to win this new cold war.