Friday, January 26, 2018

Eric Zuesse — Trump Now Increases ‘Defense’ Budget 37% Above Obama’s

The Washington Post headlined on January 26th, “Trump plans to ask for $716 billion for national defense in 2019 — a major increase”, and reported that when President Trump had entered the White House in January 2017, the ‘Defense’ budget was $521 billion, but that President Trump will propose in his upcoming State-of-the-Union speech, a 2019 ‘Defense’ budget of $716 billion, which, if it becomes law, would mean a 37% increase, above Obama’s last Pentagon budget (for 2017).
This is in line with President Trump’s recently announced strategic change, away from Obama’s military budget, which was focused mainly against radical Islamic terrorism, now to target, instead, mainly Russia and China, and, secondarily, Iran and North Korea. As CBS News summarized on January 20th, “There is a major change in U.S. military strategy. On Friday [January 19th], more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said terrorism is no longer the No. 1 priority. … Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis’ top priority.”
Where is the money going to come from? (rhetorical question). Growth stimulated by the Trump tax cuts. (Trump economic team).

Should make for some interesting politics in a country where the conventional wisdom is that everything needs to be paid for (even though that is a false belief).

Washington's Blog
Trump Now Increases ‘Defense’ Budget 37% Above Obama’s
Eric Zuesse

4 comments:

Kaivey said...

There is no democracy in the US, Trump lied, the Deep State rules. When will Americans wake up. Get money out of politics. There sold be a limit of what political parties can spend in election campaigns.

'Whereas even many Republicans had attacked candidate Trump during his campaign, mainly for being insufficiently neoconservative (imperialistic — such as his allegedly not being sufficiantly anti-Russia), President Trump is turning out to be actually more of a neocon than was his predecessor — not less, such as he had promised.

Millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump because he promised to be less of a neocon than was his predecessor — and far less of one than was Hillary Clinton — are finding out that he might instead be even more of a neocon than she was." Eric Zuesse.

Noah Way said...

Whoever sits in that seat is a puppet. You either get with the game or you are gone (a la JFK). Hillary was thoroughly vetted and pre-approved as an avid and willing puppet. Trump had to be brought into line, and he has.

So much for "working with Russia". Hello Cold War 2.0.

Matt Franko said...

Deficit is coming way down... Trump will just point to that...

Matt Franko said...

We’re running a surplus this month thru this past Thursday....

Treasury General Account has $270b in it....