War Hawks Want A Military Budget Tied To Inflation

By Andrew Lautz, Responsible Statecraft

President Biden released a budget proposal this week that’s full of historically high spending in just about every part of the sprawling federal government.

This includes the Department of Defense, which would work with a $773 billion budget in the upcoming fiscal year (FY 2023) if the president has his way. And while a wide variety of stakeholders from Democratic lawmakers to progressive organizations to taxpayer advocacy groups have criticized the high level of military spending in Biden’s new budget proposal, the defense hawks on Capitol Hill are already jumping up and down to claim the president’s defense budget is not nearly high enough.

The top Republicans on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees — Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), respectively — ominously warned last week that anything less than military spending of five percent above inflation would make the United States unable “to defend our nation or our allies in the future.”