Trump’s Plan To Expand The Military Sucks

President Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to strengthen the country’s already mighty military. “Our equipment is old and exhausted and we’re going to have the finest military that the United States has ever had by far”. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans want to enact sizable tax cuts for corporations and individuals.

The White House says it will release a budget summary in mid-March and a full budget sometime in May.

Trump’s spending proposal marks the opening bid in what will be a hard debate in the coming months over next year’s budget. Ideally, a large majority of that $54 billion cut would come straight out of the military budget. Defense accounts for between 20% and 25% of the federal budget, and he has pledged to increase spending there.

“I think it’s important for those of us who believe in global engagement and believe in the function of foreign aid to justify it, to never take it for granted and to constantly examine it to make sure the money is being spent well and that it’s worth spending at all”, he said.

“There is more to our government than just defense”, he added.

Officials familiar with the proposal say it calls for slashing 37 percent of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development budgets. In 2016, Senate Democrats did not shy away from using the filibuster against the defense spending bill in Congress; this is why the Department of Defense is still operating under a continuing resolution, which freezes funding at the previous year’s levels and prohibits new-start programs. “This is a landmark event, a message to the world in these unsafe times, of American strength, security and resolve”.

“Diplomacy keeps us safe by preventing conflict, defusing crises, and building bridges of friendship and cooperation”, he said.

The White House also plans to reduce spending for the State Department and USAID, say USA media reports, which together received an estimated $50.1bn during the current fiscal year, or a little more than 1% of the total federal budget.

Since 2011, defense spending as a share of overall GDP has taken a nosedive, and its deleterious effects have been felt throughout all branches of the military. The numbers Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget, Rick Mulvaney, has circulated bear little resemblance to the ideas put forth in the speech.

Describing the president’s request for defense discretionary spending, but without any programmatic details, Mulvaney said the request would be $603 billion for fiscal 2018.

The president’s budget proposal calls for the cuts to help offset a $54 billion increase in defense spending, several media outlets reported. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the spending plan publicly before it is presented to Congress.

Please write to your federal elected officials and tell them not to cut domestic spending to enhance the military budget.

Trump has also pledged to improve care for veterans; his military spending increase could fund five years of care for one million veterans, according to the NPP.

The Trump budget hasn’t been finalized and, like any president’s proposal, will be scrutinized and altered by members of Congress. The next fiscal year starts in October. Mulvaney has not specified whether the president’s request for his first complete budget pulls the wartime spending back under the total Pentagon budget umbrella, as he advocated when he served as a Tea Party congressman from SC and called it a “slush fund”.