Hegseth’s Proposed Pentagon “Budget Cuts” Seemingly Won’t Reduce Spending at All
(The Defense Department quickly reframed plans for an 8 percent annual reduction in military spending as “offsets.”)
Hegseth, in an internal memo, ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years,
-- and instructed officials to hand in their proposals by this coming Monday.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), long a vocal proponent of cutting the military budget as it approaches $1 trillion a year,
agreed on social media that “when the Pentagon cannot complete an independent audit,
we should cut military spending by 8% a year over the next five years.”
️That is not what the administration appears to have in mind.
While headlines in major media outlets characterized Hegseth’s memo as a striking call for #cuts ...
Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Salesses described the proposal as a push for #offsets ...
that could be used to fund other military-related efforts favored by President Donald Trump,
including an “Iron Dome for America” that experts have ridiculed as a wasteful “fantasy.”
“The department will develop a list of potential #offsets that could be used to fund these priorities,
as well as to refocus the department on its core mission of deterring and winning wars,”
said Salesses.
“The offsets are targeted at 8% of the Biden administration’s FY26 budget,
totaling around $50 billion,
which will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities.”
The U.S. military budget for Fiscal Year 2025 is roughly $850 billion.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-pentagon-cuts
