Trump Says US Military Spending Is "Crazy" High — Then Calls for Billions More

Trump backs away from calling spending levels ‘crazy’ a week ago.

(ANTIWAR.COM) On Monday, President Trump seemed to be positioning himself against Pentagon calls for spending increases, saying that the spending levels are already “crazy” and that he didn’t envision the 2020 military budget should exceed $700 billion, despite Pentagon presumptions it would be $733 billion.

Having met with committee chairs, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, Trump has now completely reversed his position, and is calling on the Pentagon to seek an even bigger spending increase in the next budget.

Administration officials are now saying Mattis was assured that Trump will support a budget of $750 billion. This would be a substantial increase over the previous year’s budget, and over the requested budget.

On top of that, Congress has almost always scrambled to outdo the president with even bigger increases, meaning that unsustainably high budgets are rapidly going to get even more unsustainable.

By Jason Ditz / Republished with permission / ANTIWAR.COM / Report a typo