Biggest budget ever for Pentagon

Still, military ‘stretched too thin,’ expert says

WA SH I NG T ON • It’s the biggest budget the Pentagon has ever seen: $ 700 billion. That’s far more in defence spending than America’s two nearest competitors, China and Russia, and will mean the military can foot the bill for thousands more troops, more training, more ships and a lot else.

And next year it would rise to $716 billion. Together, the two- year deal provides what Defence Secretary Jim Mattis says is needed to pull the military out of a slump in combat readiness at a time of renewed focus on the stalemated conflict in Afghanistan and the threat of war on the Korean peninsula.

The budget bill that President Donald Trump signed Friday gives the Pentagon $ 94 billion more than last year — a 15.5 per cent jump. It’s the biggest year- overyear windfall si nce t he budget soared by 26.6 per cent, from $ 345 billion in 2002 to $437 billion the year after, when the nation was fighting in Afghanistan, invading Iraq and expanding national defence after the 9/11 attacks.

Every secretary of defence since 2011, when the Congress passed a law setting firm limits on military and domestic spending, has complained that spending caps set by the Budget Control Act were squeezing the military so hard that the number of ready-to-fight combat units was dwindling. Aging equipment was stacking up, troops were not getting enough training and the uncertain budget outlook was clouding America’s future.

“I cannot overstate the negative i mpac t to our troops and families’ moral from all this budget uncertainty,” Mattis said just hours before the House and Senate approved the deal.

More money for the Pentagon, however, is not the simple solution some might think. Even with the spending caps of recent years, the defence budget has been robust by historical standards. Todd Harrison, a defence budget specialist at the Center for Security and International Studies, says military funding has been near the inflationadjusted peak levels of the armed forces buildup during the 1980s under president Ronald Reagan.

The problem, Harrison says, is that the budgets have been stretched by rising personnel costs and more expensive technology investments, compounded by the cumulative effects of more than a decade of combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. And throughout this period, the military has been required to keep up or even increase its pace of operations at home and abroad — and there is no letup in sight.

“We are stretched too thin,” Harrison said Friday.