Putting Some Intelligence Into Military Spending

(The Bloomberg View) -- A new report warns Congress that the U.S. could struggle to win, or might even lose, a war against China or Russia, because America’s military has “failed to keep pace with changing security challenges.” Why? One reason, according to the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission, is that military planners have to deal with a budget that shifts unpredictably from one year to the next.

The 2020 budget, the next one up for consideration, is a good example. President Donald Trump has said he wants to subtract $33 billion from the $733 billion now on the table. After significant increases in 2018 and 2019, the Pentagon had expected the same for 2020. Facing a possible cut instead, it’s now preparing two different projected budgets: one that absorbs the president’s reduction and another that ignores it.

Yes, the Defense Department could cut $33 billion without imperiling the nation’s safety or even changing the military’s basic operations. It could, for example, limit Army troop strength to this year’s level, slow the Navy’s rush to accumulate 355 ships, buy fewer F-35 fighters, and slightly reduce a planned 2.6 percent pay increase across the services.

But this would solve the 2020 challenge without addressing the larger problem. Thanks to Congress’s sequestration caps and last-minute omnibus reconciliation deals, the military has to guess every year how much money it will have to spend.

Such unpredictability makes intelligent long-term planning almost impossible. And it wastes money by leading the Pentagon into an inefficient, last-minute spending spree at the end of flush fiscal years. The Navy alone estimates that budget uncertainty has cost it $4 billion since 2011.

Here’s one fix that might get the military off the roller coaster: Congress could guarantee the Pentagon a consistent annual raise of, say, 3 percent or so above inflation for five to 10 years. Defense planners would have to give up any expectation of big single-year bonanzas. But the consistency would be worth it.

The trick would be to get budget hawks and defense hawks in Congress, as well as the president, on the same page.

The midterm election may provide an opening, because a divided Congress can enable bipartisan compromise. Representative Adam Smith, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and his Senate counterpart, James Inhofe, have both called for an end to budget uncertainty.

Persuading their parties to reach a long-term bargain would restore sanity to military spending and improve the Pentagon’s ability to plan for the nation’s long-term security.

Editorials are written by the Bloomberg View editorial board.

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