3 reasons why House Republicans won’t cut the military budget

The new conservative House of Representatives has taken power and is ready to fight against President Joe Biden and his foreign policy.

As part of the deal that emerged when Rep. Kevin McCarthy persisted through 15 rounds of votes to secure the speakership last week, a group of 20 far-right lawmakers reportedly won a concession to cap the federal budget at the 2022 level in exchange for agreeing to an increase. debt ceiling. If the McCarthy caucus follows through on this, it will put the massive military budget — $817 billion of this fiscal year’s $1.7 trillion federal budget — under the microscope. It could result in significant cuts, possibly as much as $75 billion.

This may not be without reason, especially the bipartisan consensus on the Chinese threat. The chairman of the Republican House committee tasked with national security will certainly back down on his call to reduce defense spending, even if it means having to face members of his own party, and both parties want to avoid the defense cuts triggered by the debt ceiling crisis of 2013. But the proposal, and his response, says a lot about how Washington thinks about its role in the world, and how the new GOP House majority may increase its own sense of oversight. to the Biden statecraft.

Republicans also entered Congress with some members pushing for more scrutiny of US policy on the Ukraine war, which includes around $50 billion in military and financial aid to Kyiv. McCarthy has brought attention to the “blank check” in November. The criticism may have been the impetus for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise visit to Washington before Christmas, to bolster support for his country ahead of the Republican takeover. Despite Zelenskyy’s appeal to the American people, polls show that Republican voters are increasingly hesitant to extend aid indefinitely as the war approaches the one-year mark.

Now, members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus that, after much jockeying, allowed McCarthy to clinch the speakership tried to express a clear message on national security. “We can be budget hawks and defense hawks,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said in a statement The Hugh Hewitt Show. “I support us going to absolute war, so to speak, to make sure that our defense is strong enough and our country is strong enough to take on China. But look, we have to do it responsibly and we haven’t. We let the swamp beat us. We let the swamp set requirements.

But looking ahead, cutting the defense seems aspirational. Roy himself has disavowed those people. And the staying power of Republican leaders on key House committees, namely Mike’s lot — Rep. Mike D. Rogers on Armed Services, Rep. Michael McCaul on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Mike Bost on Veterans Affairs, and Rep. Mike Turner on Intelligence — as well as the Biden White House positions itself, cannot be underestimated. “This push to defund our military in the name of politics makes no sense and is inconsistent with our national security needs,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.

Or as one senior Democratic aide, speaking anonymously, texted me, “There are a lot of hawks on their side. And this is on our side.

Three reasons the budget will not change

The hawkish consensus about the Chinese threat is the main reason that cutting the military budget is impossible.

Andrew Lautz, director of policy at the National Taxpayers Union, said that, even without compromising US national security, major cuts could be made to outdated military programs.

But he is pessimistic that this will happen in the near future and shows how quickly the Republican leadership, even some of the blocks discussed with McCarthy, began to dispute the idea of ​​cutting the defense has never been on the table. And so-called Republicans Reagan wanted to see a bigger budget to fight China.

“The solution is always spending more,” Lautz told me. “I don’t think we’re going to, anytime in the next two years, see meaningful cuts to the defense budget that happen through the appropriations process.”

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Another reason for the impossibility of significant defense budget cuts is the resulting chaos in 2013, when the debt ceiling negotiations led to a complex wrangling of the congressional super-committee and the sequestration process that led to the order, right-of-the-Board cut the defense budget that the military and the legislature both parties hated.

No one wants to repeat what happened with the effects of the 2011 Budget Control Act. “Joseph Votel, a retired general who is now president of the nonprofit trade group Business Executives for National Security, wrote in an email. “What is happening now does not reflect those qualities.”

A third reason: The political energy that could be expended on reducing the military budget is likely to be channeled into examining the means and limits of US aid to Ukraine.

As of 2021, the Biden administration has provided nearly $25 billion in military aid to Ukraine as well as $24 billion in financial and humanitarian aid. There are right-wing voices advocating for such aid, and progressives also see the importance of maintaining aid to defeat a Russian invasion even at the cost of bolstering military contractors. National security officials have vehemently denied this. “We have to make sure we hold political support here,” former CIA director Michael Morell, who is now a consultant at Beacon Global Strategy, said recently.

Even if the aid continues, House Republicans will increase oversight. Republican concerns about the US public debt, concerns about corrupt practices in Ukraine that could make it difficult to monitor the use of weapons, and the effect of such aid on US national security, will all be raised at the hearing.

The US is sending so many weapons to Ukraine that supply chains are strained and stockpiles are depleted. “The current policy toward Ukraine is simply unsustainable financially and in terms of what it actually provides for Ukrainians,” said Dan Caldwell, vice president for foreign policy at the conservative organization Stand Together. “You can’t continuously provide the type of support that we do. We’re running out of ammunition to give them, we’re running out of certain types of equipment to take.

Not all Republicans agree. “Those who want to reduce aid to Ukraine may be a minority. I often think that if you are a minority, you may be louder, because you want to be heard,” said Mira Ricardel, former deputy national security adviser during the Trump administration.

Even those who support Ukraine’s defense say the renewed congressional attention will be positive. Ricardel, who now works at the Chertoff Group consultancy, said the scrutiny would force the White House to sharpen its thinking. “The beauty is that there are two branches of government that work on these things [is] it forces you to state what you’re going for, why, and how you’re going to do it and defend it,” she said.

The defense budget may not change, but there is a growing group of lawmakers

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said there was “bipartisan opposition” to the military budget cuts — but also bipartisan support.

A loose coalition of Republicans and Democrats called for a more restrained and realistic US foreign policy. It was not an organized cohort by any means. Some push for views that can be called isolationist. Others have opted for aid to Ukraine, only continuing to advocate for an end to the war. What unites them is criticism of some of the articles of faith of US foreign policy that lead to reliance on military forces abroad.

The Koch-backed Stand Together, of which Caldwell is an executive, is backing many think-tank experts who are pushing for a rethink of existing policies. “We have seemingly unstoppable growth in the defense budget that is not connected to a real strategy,” he told me. “The only way you can realistically reduce defense spending is by effectively changing America’s grand strategy.”

The military budget has grown significantly — 4.3 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the past two years. Rep. Mike Rogers, who will chair the influential House Armed Services Committee, has advocated for an increase of 5 percent annually.

Although in many ways the US is more polarized along partisan lines than ever, progressives and far-right Republicans sometimes agree that the military budget is inflated and wasteful. It’s not clear they agree on national security to challenge the status quo.

Many former senior Trump administration officials have decamped to the America First Policy Institute. The organization noted that “Maintaining a strong military is not just about having the highest budget,” although some suggestions for cuts would make progressives bristle, such as eliminating “non-military issues such as climate change and democracy promotion from the military. Defense doctrine and policy .” (Although many progressives would agree with the sentiment to stop “using military or tax dollars to build the nation.”)

It’s also unclear what role the so-called rebel wing of the Republican Party will play in the House. As the backroom discussion that brought McCarthy the speaker became more clear, my expert told me that cutting the defense budget seems unlikely – a sign that the noise can reach a limit here.

However, the mainstream discussion offers an opportunity to consider how the massive spending on the US military reflects the inertia of the military adventure that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, supported by the financial interests of the military industrial complex.

Interestingly, it was Hewitt, the right-wing talk show host, who said the House rebels’ messaging was too muddled. In the program, he pushed Rep. Chip Roy to more clearly articulate how Republicans can China Hawks when limiting debt. The answer doesn’t give much away: “We need to stop the government waking up and taking up arms, and stop funding the bureaucrats who perpetrate tyranny on the American people,” Roy replied. “We can have a strong national defense, we can beat the DOD so it doesn’t wake up, find savings, then step up and add what it takes to beat China.”