The Biden administration is claiming that the amount it set aside for defense in its budget request is enough to carry out National Security and Defense Strategies.

It’s not.

The ask for national security programs and activities includes $842 billion for the Defense Department, which the Biden administration claims is a 3.2% boost.

It’s not.

Adjusting for inflation at 2.4% (the rate the administration likely used), the increase would fall to a measly 0.8 percent, or $6.4 billion. And figuring in the approximately $12.3 billion it’ll likely cost to provide civilian and uniform forces with the pay raise outlined in the budget request, the $6.4 billion increase becomes a $5.8 billion cut.

If we use a more realistic yet still conservative inflation rate of 5%, the cut to defense programs and activities is close to $28 billion.

This comes on top of at least $1.6 trillion in lost buying power, due to inflation, over the last two decades and would keep defense spending at a historical low as a share of the economy.

These cuts also come at a time when our military is facing growing global challenges. The Wall Street Journal editorial board summed up the threat environment: “China is building a world-class military to drive America out of the Pacific. Russia is committed to grinding down Ukraine and then moving its military to the Polish border; Iran may soon have a nuclear bomb; North Korea is lobbing missiles toward Japan. Hypersonics and missiles threaten the U.S. homeland.”

The latest assessment from the combatant command in charge of the Indo-Pacific region documents its need for $15.4 billion in fiscal year 2024 to address the growing challenge from China.

The DOD Pacific Deterrence Initiative request in the Biden budget falls far short of this need at just $9.1 billion.

And Biden proposes to essentially cut defense while at the same time requesting large increases for non-defense discretionary spending, including hikes for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation of about 19% and the Departments of Agriculture and Education of around 14%.

Two examples convey President Joe Biden’s priorities.

The budget proposes to quadruple international climate finance and establish another new US International Development Finance Corp. “equity” revolving fund to make “investments” to “empower early and growth-stage companies from low and lower-middle income countries.”

I guess the Biden administration plan is to just leave the US military and the growth-stage companies that support it to make do with below-stagnant level investments.

The administration also proposes a 15% increase for the Treasury in part to “improve the taxpayer experience.”

I know what would improve my experience as a taxpayer: lower taxes and less of my tax money going to activities that have nothing to do with military capability.

Yet apparently ramping up the ability to collect more taxes is a higher priority than deterring the nation’s adversaries and building a sufficiently sized and capable military to protect the people who pay those taxes.

No doubt a few bright spots in the defense-budget request will be important to evaluate and discuss once programmatic details are available.

But the continued mismatch between strategy and funding that forces destructive tradeoffs between capacity and capability and that weakens overall military competitiveness eclipses those positives. 

“America’s defense budget should be guided by our values, needs and national-security strategy,” stressed Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, reacting to the Biden budget.

I couldn’t agree more.

This budget request does not do that. Instead, it prioritizes domestic spending with questionable purposes and outcomes over national security and the force dedicated to provide that security.

Elaine McCusker, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, previously served as acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller) at the Defense Department.