Say Anything Blog

Over the weekend Fox reported that Obama had requested 10% reductions in Pengtagon budgets from the joint chiefs of staff.  But now Congressional Quarterly is reporting almost exactly the opposite: A proposed 8% increase in defense spending.

But even with that 8% increase, not everyone in the military is happy:

The Obama administration has given the Pentagon a $527 billion limit, excluding war costs, for its fiscal 2010 defense budget, an Office of Management and Budget official said Monday.

If enacted, that would be an 8 percent increase from the $487.7 billion allocated for fiscal 2009 (PL 110-329), and it would match what the Bush administration estimated last year for the Pentagon in fiscal 2010. But it sets up a potential conflict between the new administration and the Defense Department’s entrenched bureaucracy, which has remained largely intact through the presidential transition.

Some Pentagon officials and congressional conservatives are already trying to portray the OMB number as a cut by comparing it to a $584 billion draft fiscal 2010 budget request compiled last fall by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The $527 billion figure is “what the Bush people thought was the right number last February and that’s the number we’re going with,” said the OMB official, who declined to be identified. “The Joint Chiefs did that to lay down a marker for the incoming administration that was unrealistic. It’s more of a wish list than anything else.”

An 8% increase is probably appropriate.  I’m pro-military, and as defense-minded as they come, but it’s worth remember that military bureaucrats tend to be like any other flavor of government bureaucrat.  They’ve never met a budget increased that couldn’t be improved by doubling it.

Even so, this move by Obama surprises me.  It makes me wonder how it’s going to sit with the anti-military elements of his political base.  For years we’ve heard them (and some others genuinely concerned with military spending) carp about the cost of the war in Iraq, and the cost of our defense spending in general.  Now that The One is going to increase defense spending, how will they react?

Regardless of how they react, I think this is something I can support Obama on pending additional details.  My only concern is how we’re going to afford this likely appropriate spending increase given all the other spending Obama and the Democrats want to do on things like “economic stimulus” spending sprees that are really cover for subsidized STD testing, among other things.