White House Guidance: Increase Pentagon Budget Every Year

Wants Increases Beyond Budget Cap Allowances

The White House has given the Pentagon its “budget guidance” for 2015 through 2019, and unsurprisingly envisions the military’s budget growing every single year by a significant amount.

The most recent omnibus spending bill rolled back nominal sequestration cuts and continued military spending growth, and the new report points to that trend continuing every year.

Though it’s in keeping with administrations always wanting to throw more money at the military, the guidance is noteworthy for openly projecting budgets beyond the budget cap allowances in place.

What it means is that the administration isn’t even pretending that the spending caps are a real thing, and is continuing to operate under the assumption that they can keep throwing money about wherever they want without worrying about Congressional opposition. After the most recent spending bill, that may be a warranted assumption.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.