February 6, 2001

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Defense

Over the past week, President Bush has made it clear that he will not be asking for an immediate increase in defense spending. If there are to be increases in the future, they will only come after his team at the Pentagon has completed an in-depth review of defense needs.

There are of course good reasons for such a review. For eight years, the Clinton Administration let defense policy and resource issues drift. But during the presidential campaign, George Bush and Dick Cheney repeatedly hammered the Clinton Administration for neglect of the armed forces and the decline in their capabilities. That decline did not magically go away with Bush’s election. America's armed forces are not as combat ready as they should be and they lack the equipment and resources needed to handle their day-to-day responsibilities. One doesn’t need a new review to see that planes aren’t flying for lack of parts, soldiers aren’t training for lack of funds, and the navy’s ammunition stocks are running dangerously low. Asking for a defense supplemental for this year is not, as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pejoratively put it, “to throw money” at the Pentagon. There are identifiable, concrete problems that need to be fixed now, not later.

Moreover, unless the Bush Administration plans to scale back substantially on America’s global security commitments, or dump plans for missile defense and military modernization, it will have to ask for a substantial increase in next year’s defense budget. However, postponing an increase now only makes it more politically difficult to sell a larger increase down the road. The debate over tax cuts will result in a reduced budget surplus and a fierce scramble for the remainder. Nor is there any guarantee that the Republicans will control Congress past 2002, further jeopardizing the prospects for repairing the country’s defenses. It’s not too late for President Bush to change course: increase defense spending, increase it substantially, and increase it now.