Center for American Progress

Why Biden shouldn’t wait to reduce defense spending
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Why Biden shouldn’t wait to reduce defense spending

Lawrence J. Korb writes about the importance of reducing defense spending.

Indications are that when the Biden administration presents its FY2022 defense budget and FY2022-26 defense program to Congress in May, it will propose keeping defense spending at the historically high level of $740 billion as the Trump administration proposed and the Congress approved for the Pentagon in FY2021. In short, President Biden is keeping what Donald Trump added to the defense budget — $100 billion — despite saying during his campaign that such a level was unnecessary. As Biden put it, “Trump abandoned all fiscal discipline when it came to defense spending.”

While no one can be sure exactly why Biden has come to this decision, there appears to be at least two factors that impacted the decision.

The above excerpt was originally published in Responsible Statecraft. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Lawrence J. Korb

Former Senior Fellow