OPINION:
When all else fails, talk about health care. It should be on a bumper sticker for the left. This week, President Biden brought in the big guns, former President Barack Obama, to again try to convince Americans that Obamacare actually worked to reduce costs and increase access. That didn’t end up being the story.
The scene inside the East Room was another sad and brutal reminder of how weak Mr. Biden is perceived by even his own party, who swooned over the 44th president like he was the second coming of the Beatles. Mr. Biden stood on the fringes looking confused and alone.
The innate weakness of the nation’s 46th president is becoming more than a political liability. It’s becoming a crisis that threatens American national security.
The deep-seated nature of a dithering, clay-footed presidency has manifested itself in the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, the failure to deter the Russia-Ukraine war, the myopic desperation of the Iran nuclear talks, and feeble China policy.
Perhaps no other indicator of the long-term detrimental impact of this reality is as stark as the administration’s projections for military spending. Mr. Biden heralded increases in military funding in his proposed budget but, in typical fashion, buried the fact that it amounts to only about 1.5% after inflation.
While the Biden administration looks to spend trillions on welfare expansion and double down on its open-border policy, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are salivating. Despite the global realignment and the rise of the most powerful bloc of authoritarian powers in history, the Biden projections for military spending will tank to only 2.5% of GDP by 2030.
The Association of the U.S. Air Force has publicly stated the service is the “smallest, oldest and least prepared” it’s been in 75 years, yet the Pentagon is cutting back the F35 program. The Air Force has thousands of fewer pilots and aircraft maintenance personnel than it should.
China now has the largest Navy in the world, with nearly 500 ships. By the end of Mr. Biden’s term, the number of U.S. Navy vessels will be only 280, down from nearly 300 today. Analysts agree that we should be approaching parity with communist China, especially since the U.S. Navy retains global responsibilities the Chinese presently don’t have.
Growing the Navy’s reach and power by getting smaller makes about as much sense as the concept of leading from behind.
The Army is also contracting. A large, professional fighting force is necessary to ensure the success of an overall deterrence regime. Over the next year, the force size will fall by another 12,000. Thanks to the Pentagon creating a hostile environment for new members with Biden’s mandates for critical race theory seminars, COVID-19 vaccinations and fruitless public investigations into an alleged epidemic of extremism in the ranks, recruitment is suffering mightily.
The Marine Corps had hoped to increase its ranks to 194,000. “That level would have allowed the Marine Corps to build new capabilities without sacrificing the old,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Due to budget cuts, the Corps will lose another 2,700 in F.Y. 2022 and will be near its post-Cold War lows of 172,000 by 2024. The Corps is also suffering from a pilot shortage and is expected to cut fixed-wing and rotary aircraft between now and 2030.
Returning U.S. military spending to the Cold War level of 5% of GDP is critical to ensuring we can defend ourselves and our allies against rising threats from the New Axis and fuel our economy for decades to come.
The White House claims to be prepared to counter the threats from adversaries that seek to topple U.S. dominance. The Biden administration claims it cares about producing good-paying jobs in engineering and technology. It claims it wants more manufacturing here in the U.S.
You’re not going to deter or compete with the new China-led bloc of authoritarians by cutting personnel, systems and vital hardware. We’re not going to beat them with solar panels, windmills and electric cars, no matter what Mr. Biden’s teleprompter says.
While America haggles over pronouns and teaching sex to 5-year-olds, America’s adversaries are watching, building, innovating and ready to pounce.
Restoring America’s military should be our government’s top priority, just as it was during the first Cold War. It’s the best way to ensure America remains safe, the world more stable and keep the engine of our economy firing on all cylinders for the long haul.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax Television, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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