Let’s get something nice and sparkling clear right off the bat: What we have seen in the first month of the second Trump administration borders on revolutionary.
It’s extraordinary. Unprecedented in modern times.
There are no bugaboos or sacred cows. Unlike every President since Gerald Ford, our 47th Executive seems to not only truly understand the score and the current state of affairs, he is fearlessly and aggressively taking action. Not kicking the can down the road. Not blaming this or that circumstance outside of his control.
Everything about what we are seeing is so far outside the norm of recent experience that it certainly couldn’t be called “conservative” in any meaningful sense of the term. No, to go back to anything even remotely resembling “America” requires a lot more than merely pumping the rusty drum brakes on the Pinto of our current dilapidated ship of State.
President Trump’s insistence that the Pentagon not be spared its fair share of the cuts we desperately need is a case in point.
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Yes, The Pentagon Needs Drastic Cuts, Too
The Pentagon’s untouchable status among Republicans and what passes for “the right” generally has held for generations. Owing to decades of Cold War propaganda, (in which Americans were preposterously led to believe that we had to spend infinite money on enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet 100-times-over or that there was any even remote possibility that America could cross an ocean and a continent to defeat the Soviet Union’s tank legions on the Steppe) many, if not most Americans view Pentagon spending as de facto good and necessary, and even as money well spent.
That, of course, is absurd on its face. The Pentagon is notorious for its broken acquisition process (buying sensitive parts for our most advanced stealth fighters from China? Check.), for waste so incredible you can hardly believe your eyes ($37 for a single screw, $8,000 for a coffee maker, $1,300 for coffee cups, check.), and for being totally incapable of passing an audit.
Or my personal favorite genre: Arming one Islamic terrorist group in order to fight the CIA’s Islamic terrorist group.
Some of us remember Donald Rumsfeld’s press conference of September 10, 2001, when he told the assembled scribes that the five-sided building’s financial system couldn’t track $2.3 trillion in transactions.
In 2023, we were treated to the news that the Pentagon couldn’t account for 63% of nearly $4 trillion in assets.
Taking all that into consideration, if you still believe that there’s not a penny in savings to be found in the war machine, I have bridges in Da Nang and office buildings in Fallujah to sell you.
All that brings us to Trump, who is working up plans to cut Pentagon spending by 8% per year for the next five years.
Now, before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, these cuts will exempt (allegedly) crucial areas, like missile defense, border security, acquiring new submarines, etc.
Pentagon Spending In Perspective
But wait! How are we going to stop Russia from driving their masses of tanks and armor across Germany and France, loading up onto boats, and eventually debarking at the mouth of the Potomac?
Funny you ask: Russia supposedly spent the whopping sum of $129 billion on their military in 2024 – while in the midst of what they view as existential war with their large neighbor.
Which is to say, our politicians spent $721 billion more than Russia did last year, or 6.5 times more. Put another way, the $183 billion Uncle Sam may or may not have willy-nilly given to Ukraine without a second thought is more than Russia’s entire defense budget.
It’s time to start being realistic. History may rhyme in a Cockney rhyming slang sense, but it never repeats. Russia is not the Soviet Union. The date is not 1938, or 1944, or 1962, or 1991.
President Trump and First Buddy Elon Musk are on to something that no one else seems to understand, or be willing to do anything about: This country is right on the verge of a debt-death-spiral.
In 2022, the interest payment on the national debt was $476 billion – more than half of our annual defense budget, and nearly four-times Russia’s defense budget.
In 2024, the interest payment on the debt nearly doubled – to $881 billion. 2025 projections come out to $952 billion.
Do you understand now? If spending levels remain the same, in 10 years it will cost $1.8 trillion just to pay the interest payment.
There is a very serious enemy we need to worry about. And it’s not crazy Ivan. It’s not China, however badly our leaders want to once again plop American boys down into another land war in Asia.
It’s not even outside the gates. The enemy is inside the gates. He’s been there for decades with his grubby little hands all over the controls, weakening and destroying what is supposed to be the most powerful apex country in world history.
He goes by many names: History, Ideology, Myopia, International Utopianism, etc.
He’s at war with Reality, who has fought without a champion until 2016, with a minor interruption thrown in.
There are two and only two options. Either we become a serious, responsible people and we choose where to cut, or we stay the course, and someone else will decide for us.
The post Opinion: Trump Means Business: Yes, Even the Pentagon Will Need to Spend Less Money appeared first on The Political Insider.
