MILITARY EXPERTS: Trump Defense Spending Plans Would Break the Budget.
Over 18 months of campaign stops, stump speeches, and debates, President-elect Donald Trump rarely detailed his plans for the U.S. military, other than pledging to use it as a blunt object to hammer the Islamic State and other foreign extremist groups that threaten the United States.
But there is much more to his national security vision, and it involves tens of thousands of new troops, dozens of ships and hundreds of warplanes. Defense experts said the plans would cost almost $100 billion more than the Pentagon has currently budgeted for Trump’s first term, an amount that would require Congress to change laws setting budget caps for the Pentagon.
Still unknown, however, is where that money would come from, given Trump’s other plans to slash taxes while keeping many entitlement programs intact and also embarking on a $1 trillion infrastructure improvement program.
“I see big deficits in our future,” said long-time budget analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Military spending as a share of GDP is at or near post-WWII lows — and shrinking. Washington tax revenues are approaching $3.5 trillion annually, yet 2017 is still expected to see a half a trillion dollar deficit, even without increasing military spending.
Social Security spending now dwarfs military spending, and health care and Medicare combined make up an even larger fraction of the budget. “Income Security” spending has also eclipsed the Pentagon’s budget, minus warfighting expenses for “Overseas Contingency Operations,” in Obama-speak.
Military spending isn’t busting the budget, and wouldn’t under Trump’s plan, either. Entitlement spending is far larger (in nominal dollars and as a percentage of GDP) than it was during the Great Depression — and growing, endlessly. This is despite seven-plus years of “recovery” purchased from future generations for the low, low price of $9 trillion in new debt, and trillions more in Federal Reserve funny money.
The choice used to be between guns and butter. Today the choice is between butter and avoiding national ruin.