January 20, 2015
SOTU: Paul Scharre on the Defense Budget
The State of the Union will come shortly before the President's Budget is released to Congress, and the President should take this opportunity to reach out to Congress and show a willingness to work with them to lift the sequester and sufficiently fund the U.S. military. Military expenditures have come down significantly since their wartime peak and should not be allowed to grow unconstrained, but the sequester has been harmful and hurts military readiness and modernization. The Department of Defense needs the flexibility to allocate resources within the Department, as well as the ability to make hard choices on key defense programs. The President should also signal his desire to work with Congress on difficult issues to restrain military spending, including compensation reform and another round of base closures.