While military policy wasn’t heavily focused on in President Trump’s first address to Congress, an early and quick emphasis was placed on the recently announced plan to increase military spending by 9%, in particular emphasizing that this meant the formal end of sequestration, which led to loud applause.
Military sequestration was meant to cap the rate of military spending increases into the future, and initially went into effect in 2013, leading to predictions of doom from top military leaders virtually from the moment it was announced.
In practice, the sequestration never really happened, with every annual military budget finding some way or another to circumvent it. Despite this, hawks regularly referred to the sequestration as though it was happening, and lamented insufficiently huge military budgets.
It was in this way that the myth of sequestration remained enough of a bogeyman that Trump could get big applause for killing it once and for all, and the fact that it doesn’t require him to do anything different makes it that much easier.
In the speech, Trump offered no new details on how the increased budget would be spent, though there were a lot of previous comments suggesting a focus on more ships, planes, and troops.
end of military sequestration, which led to loud applause…
In my opinion, there is no difference whatsoever between
Dems and Repugs. Both parties are stooges for the Pentagon.
Trump’s isolationist rhetoric was merely lip service to ‘us’
masses sick of having our tax dollars squandered on
perpetual wars that only profit our ‘masters’ in the Empire.
The so-called ‘War on Terror’ has been a crock of sh*t
concocted by the warmongering Pentagon, and parroted by
the corporate MSM, which is the PR branch of the MIC.
Those of ‘us’ who are smart enough ‘not’ to drink the
Kool-aid and believe the lies and subterfuge we get from
the USG establishment are often demonized in the hapless
MSM as ‘anti-American’ or being a ‘conspiracy theorist’.
The $54 billion on budget pales in comparison to the over $100 billion we’ve been spending “off budget” for the wars. The better question is whether we’ll stop that. If so, then half that much on budget would be a big improvement.
Also, we must not forget the “black projects” from bombers to wars. We are spending vast amounts in secret. How much? Again, it makes this boost seem modest. It now seems we are buying billion-dollar bombers off budget, just as one example.