Should Congress increase defense spending?

Yes: Obama-era cuts left US too weak to deal with multiple global menaces

The U.S. Constitution makes President Donald Trump the commander in chief. The responsibility of raising and maintaining a military, however, was assigned by our Founding Fathers to Congress.

From the administrations of Lincoln and Wilson to FDR and Reagan, every serious defense buildup has required bipartisan support from the House and Senate. Today, America’s armed forces need another jolt.

So, once again, members of Congress must play their part to make sure our military can deliver enough punch to protect our homeland and our vital interests abroad.

The global forces of instability are growing, especially in three parts of the world where regional peace and stability are particularly important to the U.S.

The solidity of Europe, Asia and the Middle East is threatened by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and the transnational Islamist threat spearheaded by al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

Individually, none of these powers rise to the level of menace posed by the old Soviet Union. But when one of these threats acts up, we cannot expect the others to stand down. Indeed, we can expect them to try to exploit the situation.

For that reason, the U.S. must have the capacity to deal with all of them at once, and here we have a problem. While we need to be able to respond globally, the Pentagon no longer has a global-size force.

The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of U.S. Military Strength objectively measures the ability of our armed forces to protect vital national interests in a multi-conflict scenario.

And the measurement shows that, in terms of capacity, capability and readiness, the military has been in noticeable decline for years. In the 2017 index, the military’s overall ability to provide the hard power needed to prevail in a multi-conflict scenario was rated as “marginal.” Subsequent assessments suggest no change in the downward trend.

There are several reasons for the deteriorating assessments. Our competitors have become more aggressive and significantly beefed up their military capabilities.

Meanwhile, our allies — particularly those in Europe — have woefully under-invested in defense. But the biggest factor has been our own failure to reinvest in our increasingly strained military. The defense budget has been cut by 25 percent over the last five years.

U.S. combat operations have declined since the Bush era, but contrary to President Obama’s claims, no wars have been ended.

Meanwhile, other operational demands, such as increased deployments to Western Europe, have arisen.

Yet our military is markedly smaller than it was a decade ago. In fact, the Army is smaller than at any time since before World War II. The Navy and Air Force are likewise at historically small levels.

Readiness is another problem. Top brass have testified that only three of 58 Army brigade combat teams are ready to fight; less than half of the Air Force is ready, and half of the Navy’s aircraft are grounded for parts or maintenance.

And budget cuts have dramatically reduced flight hours for pilots and other training essential to keeping our warriors sharp and safe.

President Trump has proposed boosting the Pentagon’s budget, but his proposal is at least $30 billion short of what it needs to be. Far greater investment will be needed if we want to assure that America can remain a global power.

No: Huge military budget is already more than sufficient

By John B. Quigley

Tribune News Service

A president with business acumen should understand that throwing more money at an already over-budgeted asset isn’t wise.

Yet President Donald Trump recently unveiled a federal budget blueprint that seeks “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”

The fiscal plan, when read with an understanding of what other countries spend on their militaries, fails to make a convincing case for increasing what’s an already-massive expense – in our case, nearly $600 billion a year.

China spends about $150 billion a year, but our contentions with China are mainly in the economic realm. Russia, unlikely to send its military far from home, spends $60 billion a year and has been cutting back. North Korea, for all its missile-rattling, is small potatoes.

Trump’s budget justifies the spending hike by describing the military as being saddled with “aging ships, planes and other vehicles” in need of replacement. But the document avoids the realities of how much such materiel cost.

Earlier this month, Trump assembled a Navy audience aboard the new USS Gerald R. Ford, a mammoth aircraft carrier that has given the term “cost overrun” new meaning. Price tag: $13 billion.

Standing on its deck, he told the cheering sailors, “We’re going to soon have more coming.”

He did not mention that war games have shown gigantic aircraft carriers to be highly susceptible to today’s sophisticated anti-ship weapons or that we rely on such ships far more heavily than any other country.

And while Trump has done his share to pressure military contractors to keep their costs under control, the real question is whether such firms should be building these behemoths in the first place.

The budget’s stated goal of deterring war cannot be accomplished without strong diplomacy, yet the plan virtually guts the State Department, whose new chief, Rex Tillerson, seems content overseeing the drastic downsizing.

Trump is enamored of nuclear weapons but has not explained what a modernized nuclear force would look like or what purpose it would serve.

We are well beyond the Cold War strategy of mutual assured destruction, premised on the hope that neither we nor the Soviet Union would strike first.

Trump’s desired spending increase could perhaps be justified as a Depression-era-like measure to create jobs. But instead of spending more on a well-equipped military, we should direct those dollars toward another signature Trump aim: salvaging our crumbling infrastructure at home.

The budget explains that the increase in military spending will be balanced by cuts in other programs, many of them domestic.

Nancy Pelosi, who leads the Democrats in the House of Representatives, says that the projected boost in military spending would cause “far-reaching and long-lasting damage to our ability to meet the needs of the American people.”

Donald Trump was pressured by critics to stop being a businessman when he took the oath of office. Maybe those critics were wrong. Maybe President Trump needs to put his business hat back on.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 4:14 AM with the headline "Should Congress increase defense spending?."