2023 Defense Spending: On The Chopping Block

By Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis

Defense spending is on the chopping block we are now assured of by many media reports. And Republicans are supposed the ones who will be wielding the axe.

The story is based on some small truth but a lot of big misunderstandings.

It is true that pushing back all discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels would reduce the FY2023 spending for defense by some $75 billion as that is the spending increase for defense approved in late December 2022 and will be the level of spending for defense for the rest of the fiscal year or through the end of September. Not only would defense be reduced, but non-defense annual spending would also be cut by nearly $100 billion.

However, further details are what are important. The requirement adopted by the House majority is that overall spending for discretionary programs has to go back to the FY2022 levels or the spending from October 1, 2021, through September 30, 2022. That was roughly $1.6 trillion. That requirement is not that every department of government get hit equally, but that priorities are set and defense and non-defense get levels of spending based on the merit of the case each can make for a requested budget.

Now yes critics will complain that is not the way Washington works. One has to have what is known as logrolling. Lard up every spending bill with goodies for everyone, and then everything will flow downstream—like a huge line-up of big logs floating down the river to the sawmill—one doesn’t want to get in the way.

While Washington indeed “works” that way, and that is why we have a $32 trillion deficit and annual interest payments of $1.5 trillion that nearly equals the entire discretionary funding of the US government from the EPA to Commerce to the State Department to EEOC and to the US Department of Defense.

The House majority adopted new rules precisely because the House majority wish to have Washington run differently. This push by the Freedom Caucus in the House did indeed give many members of the 4^th estate and of the Democratic Party a case of vapors. That was easily predictable. Of course, any proposal to change the spending habits of the Washington, D.C. swamp would get folks’ hair mussed up.