By Lawrence J. Korb
According to the president, he inherited a military from President Barrack Obama that was severely depleted, lacking modern and sufficient equipment, and a veterans’ health-care system that did not allow veterans to seek medical care outside of the VA even when it was unable to provide this care for them in a timely manner. However, as with most of the claims that the president makes, these claims are both false and misleading.
The military the president inherited from Obama was not depleted or facing a massive readiness crisis, which resulted from massive underfunding in the Obama years. In fact, according to Gen. David Petraeus ,who commanded our troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan and also headed the CIA, and Michael O’Hanlon, there was no readiness crisis and in 2016, the year Trump was elected, the state of our military was “awesome.”
Nor was the defense budget seriously underfunded in the Obama years. If one controls for inflation, in FY2021 dollars Obama spent $3.3 trillion in his first term compared with the $2.9 trillion under Trump. Moreover, while defense spending did decline slightly in Obama’s second term, it still amounted to $2.7 trillion, about $200 million, or 7 percent less, than Trump’s first-term budget. However, this decline was a result of the Budget Control Act or sequestration (BCA,) which was instituted by his current chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who was then a congressman from South Carolina.
Nor has Trump, as he claimed, spent all of his defense budget money on buying equipment such as ships, fighter jets, tanks and weapons. In fact, since coming into office, the president has spent about $591 billion, or a little more than 20 percent of his total budget, on buying equipment. He does not seem to realize that the vast majority of the defense budget goes for personnel and operating costs. Moreover, in Obama’s first term he actually spent about $65 billion, or 11 percent, more than Trump on buying equipment for the troops.