Biden proposes military spending at WWII levels
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°229 | 14 December 2023
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Situation
Between the $886.3 billion in Joe Biden’s proposed regular (“base”) military budget and the $62.2 billion for Pentagon programs in the latest version of his foreign aid supplemental bill, there’s nearly $950 billion in military spending for FY2024 pending in Congress.1 Nominally, this amounts to a record high.2 Adjusted for inflation, Biden’s proposed military budget exceeds average US military spending during World War II. The chart below compares the amount pending for 2024 to the average annual US military budget from 1942-45. (If you start in 1941, the gap is much wider.)
Yes, this is a lot of money
The US is preparing to spend about as much on its military as it did in 1943, so we’re probably going to see a lot of pundits invent a methodology to argue that this calamity really isn’t a big deal.
Some are already on it. For example, New York Times columnist and Dunning-Kruger effect case study Paul Krugman recently claimed that we’re actually not spending a lot on the military, pointing to the Pentagon budget’s reduced share of the economy compared to Eisenhower’s day.
Krugman’s argument and others like it are sometimes true and always misleading. Even if the math checks out, what the author is ultimately telling you to do is ignore the data that most directly represents military spending — money. The further away you get from the actual dollars and cents, the more you’re at risk of losing the plot.
And Krugman’s definitely lost it. He says we should measure military spending in terms of the national economy. Why? What does he think the military budget is for, exactly? Military spending is supposed to be responsive to geopolitics, not dictated arbitrarily by economic expansions and contractions. The geopolitical situation is a lot different than it was in 1943 (thankfully), so why are we funding the War Department like it’s 1943? That’s the critical question, but Krugman’s analysis doesn’t allow it to be asked.
What’s more, budgets give life to policies and programs. Reading the military budget (or letting me summarize it for you) allows you to cut through the noise and get a good idea of what the US military is actually doing and where, and to what extent. If you try reading the Pentagon budget using Krugman’s interpretation of military spending, the pages might as well be blank.
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden’s proposed military budget is higher than U.S. military spending during World War Two. This chart has one gray column and one two-tone blue column. The gray one shows $877 billion, which is the average annual U.S. military budget from fiscal years 1942 to 1945 in inflation-adjusted dollars. The other one displays $949 billion — made up base military spending and supplemental military spending — which is the total pending amount for fiscal year 2024. Figures refer to Function 050 funding in real U.S. dollars. Inflation adjustment via GDP deflator. Data comes from the Office of Management and Budget, Senate Appropriations Committee, and author analysis.
Methodology
Feel free to skip this part. This comparison required looking at budget authority for function 050 (“national defense”) spending. However, data for function 050 budget authority only goes back to 1976 (per OMB), so I used function 050 outlays for 1940-75. This probably had a small effect on the data, but it’s difficult to say which direction the data were skewed: Outlays might be generally lower than budget authority because of unused funds in some years, or outlays might be higher because they include discretionary and mandatory spending, whereas budget authority only includes discretionary spending. I used a GDP deflator to get all the numbers in constant FY2023 dollars. For clarity, I left the $949 billion figure as is. If you project what the GDP deflator for FY2024 will turn out to be, that $949 billion comes out to $930 billion in FY2023 dollars (per DOD Comptroller). This doesn’t change the argument, but it probably would’ve made it more confusing and no more accurate.
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org). Follow me on Bluesky.
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Because the historical comparison I’m about to make requires adhering to the strict definition of “national defense” (Budget Function 050) spending, this amount leaves out the types of military funding administered outside the Pentagon. For example, this figure doesn’t include the $7.2 billion in “foreign military financing” in the proposed bill, because that military aid program is run by the State Department.
The $886 billion in base military spending alone would make for the largest Pentagon budget ever.