President Trump aims to ramp up defense spending, trim fat elsewhere…
Donald Trump will address congress on Tuesday, and will seek $53 billion per year in additional military funding while decreasing non-defense discretionary spending by the same amount. President Trump promises this and other items, such as funding for a border wall, as a public safety budget. To pay for it, he says that “lower priority programs and most federal agencies” will see drastic cuts, and duplicate programs will be consolidated. Rumors suggest President Trump will make large cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and foreign aid. Trump says he wants to make sure that taxpayer money is not wasted, and that the budget reflects his priorities.
This should be a heartening sign for conservatives. We’ve seen in California that despite some of the highest levels of taxation and spending in the country, they still have crumbling infrastructure like roads and dams that put thousands of Californians at risk. Many conservative ‘Never Trump’ voters also worried about his conservative credentials. But in this case Trump is keeping his campaign promises to make the military great again. By offsetting increased spending in the military with decreases in the budget elsewhere, he is also being fiscally responsible. On top of that, he is paying for this by cutting some of the targets of conservative anger, such as the EPA.
Most importantly, the proposed budget overturns the dangerous effects of sequestration on the military. Sequestration was a compromise enacted by Democratic and Republican lawmakers that cut both domestic and military spending. Among the many ramifications of sequestration was decreased readiness. Scheduled training and maintenance had to be deferred, which in turn meant that our men and women had to remain deployed longer with fewer combat ready units in the queue.
The budget is often a contentious issue. The fraud and mismanagement of money in Washington, D.C. has long been noticed by the masses and frustration over the issue seems to be at the brink. From the lavish “training” seminars for government bureaucrats all the way to the entitled food stamp users purchasing items they can’t afford, there is plenty of fat that can be trimmed from the government. It’s great that President Trump is willing to have that fight for a budget and military that actually works as hard for the American people as they work to pay taxes and get ahead in life.
Morgan Deane is an OpsLens Contributor and a former U.S. Marine Corps infantry rifleman. Deane also served in the National Guard as an Intelligence Analyst.
