Hegseth Orders 8% Cut To Pentagon Budget. Not So Fast.

The devil is always in the details. The president should be convinced to slash the waste in the military for real.

By William Hartung, Responsible Statecraft

Critics of overspending at the Pentagon were excited to see a Washington Post piece, first published yesterday, that initially gave the impression that the Trump administration was entertaining the idea of imposing substantial cuts in the Pentagon budget.

A revised version of the piece (same link), updatedThursday morning, opens as follows:

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter — a striking proposal certain to face internal resistance and strident bipartisan opposition in Congress.”

But upon clarification, it became clear that the plan is not to reduce the Pentagon’s top line, but to shift any savings found in one part of the department to pay for other systems and activities more in line with the preferences of the administration.

A clue as to what those priorities are is contained in the internal memorandum itself, which exempts 17 categories of expenditure from cuts, including operations at the southern border, spending on missile defense and a new generation of nuclear weapons, acquisition of submarines, and certain categories of drones and other munitions.

The plan is a far cry from President Trump’s recent observation that the Pentagon budget could be cut by up to one-half, but to be fair, that suggestion was premised on a significant warming of U.S. relations with Russia and China, a condition that does not currently apply.