Project 2025 comes for America‘s national defense
Trump‘s in an awkward position. As Robert Kagan aptly put it „he‘s an isolationist but likes the superpower status“. So here we are, two conflicting motivations. Add to that the old libertarian and fiscally hawkish as well as the the new nationalist-populist political preferences for lower defense spending and you get into a rather confusing situation.
Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025 and thus one of the key anti-liberal and authoritarian intellectuals in the Maga world, in his position as Director of the OBM, tried to square the circle with a budget gimmick.
The administration is uneasy about an increase in regular, annual defense spending for the reasons I mentioned above, Republicans on the Hill, however, are still much closer to the Reagan-Bush version of American conservatism before the right was hijacked by insanity, malice, anti-liberalism and weakness.
So they see the world as it is and recognize the need for extraordinary measures to overcome the naive post-Cold War peace dividend which effectively allowed the US military-industrial base to atrophy and which also discarded the the two-war construct, a concept that would be so pertinent in a world of not one but two and a half aggressive regional powers, Russia, China and Iran.
Hence, Congressional Republicans proposed to add $150 billion as part of a budget reconciliation bill which is supposed to supplement the regular defense budget over a multi-year period and enhance investments in very specific projects such as UAV production, or the Golden Dome missile defense idea.
Congressional Republicans in charge of defense appropriations and the armed services committees were hardly considering this extraordinary influx as sufficient to counter the growing threat of a new axis of evil, so they were understandably irritated by the OBM when it took credit for Congress‘ initiative and turned it against them. Vought argues that his plan would entail a 13% increase in defense spending even though his skinny budget wouldn’t appropriate any more funds to the DoD through the regular annual appropriations process. He still claims credit for an increase by planning to mimic a juggler who calculates his misleading statement by proposing to subtract 85% of the reconciliation bill‘s extra funding and pretend it would be enough to paper over the fact that freezing the current defense budget amounts to a cut of the ordinary defense budget in real terms, due to inflation.
Now, there is a qualitative difference between requesting Congress to appropriate more money to the DoD (which is more likely to turn into a long-lasting elevation of defense spending) on the one hand and a one time, extraordinary measure that is only going to pass Congress now because Republicans control both chambers, and which can only be passed once every fiscal year and was designed to be disbursed over a multiyear period, not be almost entirely used up in its first year to compensate for the lack of a more robust regular defense budget, on the other.
Add to that the cuts to the State Department, USAID and the CIA and one has to wonder what impulse is going to prevail, parochial retrenchment or the desire for continued primacy and unrivalled superpower status in the world.
Let‘s hope congressional Republicans and Democrats tear this White House wish list to pieces and assert the power of the purse in order to prepare the US for a world that‘s more dangerous now than at any point post-World War II.
Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025 and thus one of the key anti-liberal and authoritarian intellectuals in the Maga world, in his position as Director of the OBM, tried to square the circle with a budget gimmick.
The administration is uneasy about an increase in regular, annual defense spending for the reasons I mentioned above, Republicans on the Hill, however, are still much closer to the Reagan-Bush version of American conservatism before the right was hijacked by insanity, malice, anti-liberalism and weakness.
So they see the world as it is and recognize the need for extraordinary measures to overcome the naive post-Cold War peace dividend which effectively allowed the US military-industrial base to atrophy and which also discarded the the two-war construct, a concept that would be so pertinent in a world of not one but two and a half aggressive regional powers, Russia, China and Iran.
Hence, Congressional Republicans proposed to add $150 billion as part of a budget reconciliation bill which is supposed to supplement the regular defense budget over a multi-year period and enhance investments in very specific projects such as UAV production, or the Golden Dome missile defense idea.
Congressional Republicans in charge of defense appropriations and the armed services committees were hardly considering this extraordinary influx as sufficient to counter the growing threat of a new axis of evil, so they were understandably irritated by the OBM when it took credit for Congress‘ initiative and turned it against them. Vought argues that his plan would entail a 13% increase in defense spending even though his skinny budget wouldn’t appropriate any more funds to the DoD through the regular annual appropriations process. He still claims credit for an increase by planning to mimic a juggler who calculates his misleading statement by proposing to subtract 85% of the reconciliation bill‘s extra funding and pretend it would be enough to paper over the fact that freezing the current defense budget amounts to a cut of the ordinary defense budget in real terms, due to inflation.
Now, there is a qualitative difference between requesting Congress to appropriate more money to the DoD (which is more likely to turn into a long-lasting elevation of defense spending) on the one hand and a one time, extraordinary measure that is only going to pass Congress now because Republicans control both chambers, and which can only be passed once every fiscal year and was designed to be disbursed over a multiyear period, not be almost entirely used up in its first year to compensate for the lack of a more robust regular defense budget, on the other.
Add to that the cuts to the State Department, USAID and the CIA and one has to wonder what impulse is going to prevail, parochial retrenchment or the desire for continued primacy and unrivalled superpower status in the world.
Let‘s hope congressional Republicans and Democrats tear this White House wish list to pieces and assert the power of the purse in order to prepare the US for a world that‘s more dangerous now than at any point post-World War II.
