February 2, 1999

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Defense

The President's proposed $12.6 billion increase in defense spending is bogus. Having cut defense expenditures substantially every year since being elected to office, the administration's plans to increase defense dollars should be seen for what it is, a political sleight of hand. To start, the $12 billion increase amounts to little over $4 billion in new budget authority. The remaining $8 billion is a product of Defense Department accounting adjustments, delayed spending on other programs, and unspecified rescissions of previous defense appropriations. Stripped of its packaging, the administration's budget would hike defense spending for FY 2000 by a mere 1.5% over last year's budget projection. In fact, when the President’s request for all defense-related programs (Defense Department and defense-related Energy Department activities) is compared with last year’s final budget authority for the same, the total represents a real, inflation-adjusted decline in defense spending.

Obviously, this is not even a modest step and will not correct the declining state of America's military. Under this year's budget, procurement spending will actually decline from the funding levels projected in last year's budget and will, for the fifth straight year, fall billions short of what the Joint Chiefs previously identified as the funding level necessary to keep modernization plans on track. Nor is there any increase for military research and development. To the contrary, spending on defense R&D continues to decline. And, as for readiness, the proposed 5% increase in funding the administration offers hardly begins to repair the substantial and well-documented erosion in the military's combat capabilities. Contrary to its rhetoric about a turnaround in defense spending, the administration's budget will leave the Army underfunded by $2.5 billion, the Navy and Air Force facing a $3 billion shortfall, and the Marine Corps with $870 million in requirements it cannot meet.

In key respects, the Clinton Administration is following the example of the Carter Administration — a late show of concern about the state of U.S. armed forces generated in part by its own dubious stewardship of the nation's security affairs and, in part, by the pending start of the next presidential campaign. As former Vice President Dan Quayle has recently remarked, "what the administration" is now giving the nation "is defensive politics, not serious defense policy." Conservatives should stop congratulating the president for increasing defense spending, as Rep. Steve Largent did in his response to the State of the Union Address, and start helping the American people see through the president’s latest deception.