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.
More from CNAS
-
Beyond Reshoring
Introduction Over the past several years, Congress and the Trump and Biden administrations have made significant efforts to reverse America’s atrophying manufacturing capabili...
By Diem Salmon
-
Franz-Stefan Gady on Why It’s So Hard to Judge Progress or Advantage in Modern Conflict
Franz-Stefan Gady, a defense analyst and consultant in Vienna who is also an adjunct fellow with Center for a New American Security think tank and author of several books incl...
By Franz-Stefan Gady
-
CNAS Insights | The Golden Dome Needs a Strategy
Join us for the CNAS 2026 National Security Conference: New Rules, on Thursday, June 11!...
By Kalena Blake
-
Sec. Pete Hegseth Criticized over D-Day Immigration Speech
Becca Wasser joined CNN | This Morning to discuss the speech given by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to European allies on the anniversary of D-Day. "That moment was not fo...
By Becca Wasser