U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker is not happy about the Department of Defense’s proposed budget for the coming year.
Wicker said President Trump “deserves a military capable of maintaining deterrence and applying force when necessary.” But the proposed budget, he added, will not deliver it.
The influential Mississippi senator, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, said he believes the administration plans to keep defense spending at $893 billion per year for each of the next four years. However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the administration is asking for a $961 billion budget next year.
Whatever amount defense gets next year, it doesn’t matter as much as the bigger picture. Wicker said the United States needs to commit more money to defense to keep up with China. That’s a reasonable opinion, but the honest truth is the government can’t afford it.
Maybe it’s better to say the government shouldn’t budget it, because its current revenue and spending trends are badly out of whack.
The government’s willingness to spend far more money that it brings in each year has made it obvious that almost nobody in Washington believes the government should even bother trying to create a balanced budget.
The extra money that Wicker wants for defense is easy to find. It’s in the $949 billion of interest payments that the government made last year on its $36 trillion debt. Those loan repayments were $123 billion more than the entire defense budget, according to a detailed story on The Washington Post website about the debt. Cut those payments in half and it gives you $474 billion to spend on more important things.
Unfortunately, to reduce the amount of interest the government pays on its borrowings, it has to borrow less. And that ain’t happening.
In the last eight fiscal years, four from President Trump’s first term and four under President Biden, spending outpaced revenue by a total of more than $13 trillion. During President Obama’s eight years, annual deficits added another $7 trillion to the debt.
