Defense spending

How Defense Spending Creates an Unsecure Future

The defense budget, in constant dollars, has held steady for nearly 30 years. However, our armed forces are ill-equipped for conflict. Expenditures have remained stable for decades, yet America now has 35 percent fewer combat brigades, 53 percent fewer ships and 63 percent fewer combat air squadrons. How in the world does military preparedness worsen while spending goes virtually unchanged?

The rise in spending in conjunction with a decline in capacity points to financial mismanagement and legislative abuse. Americans are witnessing a rapid acceleration in what I call defenseless debt, a paradox wherein military liabilities increase alongside a simultaneous deterioration in American security. And this disturbing trend has worsened under the Obama administration.

The Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) fund epitomizes defenseless debt. The non-discretionary, “emergency” account has essentially become an executive and Pentagon slush fund used to circumvent current spending caps established by the 2011 Budget Control Act. A Stimson Center report found that OCO money has increased significantly relative to the declining number of U.S. troops overseas, from $1 million per troop to $4.9 million. And the rather inexpensive fight against ISIS cannot account for the eye-popping jump in expenditures.