Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has published a in-depth review of the American military, calling for a large increase in spending over five to seven years to face the challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Wicker’s 52-page document recommends increasing the defense budget by $55 billion next year, to a total of $950 billion. This would begin a five- to seven-year spending increase designed to replace aging military equipment that dates back to the 1980s; and replacing a defense infrastructure that includes a vast portion dating back to World War II or the post-war years.
His review includes a chart that measures defense spending as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product, which is the value of all goods and services produced. In 1962, Cold War defense spending was 9% of GDP, but the clear trend since then is downward, to the current 3%.
This does not mean defense spending has decreased; it has steadily risen to the current year’s $895 billion. That is a huge allocation of taxpayer dollars by any measurement. The declining defense-to-GDP ratio also means the American economy has grown rapidly over the past six decades.
Wicker, however, says that of all spending categories in the federal government, defense has grown the most slowly since 2000. And this includes a decade or more of expensive military missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
His report added, “The overall mission tasking assigned to the U.S. military has grown significantly since the early 1980s, but the capacity of the armed forces has shrunk precipitously.” He makes a good case for a “generational investment” in the military, one that will require defense spending to rise to 5% of GDP for several years to be ready to confront our global foes.
There are three things to consider about his proposals:
• How can the military be underequipped when its budget is $895 billion? Wicker did note that one area of the defense budget that has risen is pay for military and civilian employees, which now accounts for 40% to 45% of total defense spending. That leaves a lot less for equipment, and there’s no doubt the United States has an expensive global mission, but it’s obvious he envisions annual defense spending above $1 trillion a year very soon.
• How do we pay for this? Wicker quotes President Ronald Reagan, who once said, “Defense is not a budget issue. You spend what you need.” Sorry, not buying that any more. It is most certainly a budget issue when the country already is overspending by $1 trillion a year.
That’s the frustrating thing — no one has the incentive or the discipline to keep spending reasonably in line with revenues. One reason they lack fiscal responsibility is that most voters don’t care, and won’t care until the public debt blows a hole in the government safety net.
• How would a huge boost in defense spending get through Congress? Democrats understandably would demand some spending of their own in return for supporting more for defense. And, right now, a significant number of Republicans in Congress can’t grasp the value of supplying arms to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion, even though this assistance is creating jobs in America to manufacture the weapons. How many people in Congress will support Wicker’s proposals?
On the positive side, Wicker is thinking long term and big picture, and we don’t have a whole lot of that in Congress today. He’s correct that our defense needs upgrades, but the dollars and the politics are significant obstacles.
