Over a month after its statutorily required deadline, the Biden administration released today its defense budget for Fiscal Year 2024.

Better late than never right? In this case, the reverse may be true.

Capitol Hill will again have to work overtime to plug the inflation holes the administration left unfilled and top off the anemic request with needed new dollars to invest more, faster to deter the Chinese Communist Party from perceiving an opening to take Taiwan by force in the near future.  

Needlessly scant on the details necessary to deeply scrutinize its request, the Biden administration released little in terms of justifications and economic assumptions required to fully assess its total federal spending request. What we do know is the US military would receive a total of $842 billion, a modest 3.2 percent nominal increase over enacted levels for the fiscal year. What inflation estimate was used to calculate the topline is unclear, but if the administration stuck with the Office of Management and Budget’s estimate of 2.2 percent, the figure will immediately be called into question given the Fed’s recent testimony that it expects to keep raising interest rates, which is a direct admission that inflation is not easing to the historical and desirable 2 percent figure at the pace they want.

Almost no one believes inflation will be around two points in just 6.5 months’ time when the fiscal year begins—especially in light of last year’s inflation estimate of the Pentagon’s preferred index coming in close to 7 percent. If inflation stays high at a rate of 5 percent, for example, then the budget request results in a real cut of nearly $14 billion in purchasing power.

While valiant in growing the military’s budget above White House figures last year, Congress was unable to fully cover the inflation bills for 2023 despite their near herculean effort to do so (read a $13 billion add). That means Congress paid about half of the Pentagon’s unpaid or under-paid inflation bills from this current year which are still partially due on top of this coming year’s inflation and the need for real growth.

As a result, the Biden administration appears to have not learned its lesson when submitting its defense budget request to Congress. Last year, it submitted a request that just barely allowed the Defense Department to tread water amid red hot inflation, and this year it seems to be following the same playbook.

It is a relief that SASC Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) recently said he expects Congress to continue to increase defense spending above requested levels given the threats emanating from three theaters across the globe simultaneously and a military falling behind China’s much too quickly. But it would have been better to have a full and committed partner in the White House in seeing the world as it is and recognizing reality gets a vote when it comes to defense expenditures.

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