Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal would give more money to the U.S. Department of Defense than it can spend in a cost-effective manner and attempts to pay for it by slashing other programs that contribute to national security, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.
The report recommends cutting the budget to $700 billion, an amount that is more than enough to provide security for the nation and a number that President Donald Trump publicly embraced shortly before the release of his own budget.
“These reductions would not undermine U.S. national security,” said Lawrence Korb, a CAP senior fellow and author of the report. “In fact, they would enhance it by funding truly critical security programs and reducing the national debt.”
A $700 billion defense budget would only be 2 percent smaller than the enacted fiscal year 2019 budget of $716 billion and would come after a total 20 percent real increase over former President Barack Obama’s last defense budget of $620 billion in FY 2017, the report says. It also could help to slow the growth of the national debt and still permit the United States to spend vastly more on defense than China and Russia.
Read the report: “What the FY 2020 Defense Budget Gets Wrong” by Lawrence Korb.
For more information or to talk to an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected] or 202.478.6327.