More Money for a Woke Pentagon? ‘No Sir, Not This Time. We’re Not Falling for That’: Senator

Hill leaders may have escaped another shutdown showdown, but there’ll be plenty of heavy-lifting when Congress comes back into session next week. It hasn’t been easy, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “trying to turn the aircraft carrier back to real budgeting and spending reform.” His analogy for getting back to real appropriations work was an interesting one, since Republicans seem to swing an ax at every budget but one: Defense. And maybe, one senator says, it’s time to rethink that.

The party of frugality has always had one big exception. No matter how deep America’s debt, Republicans have never minded funneling money to the military — and, in most cases, argued for more. With Gaza in flames, Russia on the move, and China ready to take over the world, beefing up our national security seems reasonable. But is that what this money is actually doing? Or are Republicans making billions of dollars sacrosanct without proof that our military is actually becoming stronger and more prepared because of it?

Right now, the U.S. Army is at its smallest size since 1940 — and getting smaller. Just this week, leaders announced a 24,000-person cut, because too many jobs remain empty. They’ve tried dropping standards — letting soldiers enlist without a high school degree in some branches, allowing retired officers to return, even telling men and women they can show up to boot camp with marijuana in their system. And still, the military is 41,000 recruits short — with no end to the struggles in sight.

Worse, the Pentagon we do have is falling woefully short of expectations. In last month’s edition of the Index of U.S. Military Strength, The Heritage Foundation rated America’s military as “weak” and “at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict.” It was the second year in a row they’d earned such a dismal ranking. More specifically, they categorized the branches this way: Army: marginal; Navy: weak; Air Force: very weak; Marine Corps: strong; Space Force: marginal; and nuclear capabilities: marginal.

We’re spending more, but not smarter, Heritage’s Wilson Beaver warns. China, on the other hand, has become such a sophisticated force that their “increased capabilities” have put the U.S. on notice, raising questions about whether we could even counter a challenge from the communist regime.

Now, in this race to pass appropriations bills (one of which is Defense), Republicans have been fighting to protect their golden calf from cuts, which is a scenario Congress faces if it doesn’t pass all of its bills by April 30. But as Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) pointed out, would slashing part of the Pentagon’s budget be such a horrible thing? We’re throwing billions of dollars at the military, he pointed out, “and how’s that working out for us?” We can’t recruit, our readiness is negligible, and our leadership is more focused on pronouns than warfare.

Republicans have been “saluting the military industrial complex at every turn and saying year after year, ‘Well, I don’t want to spend this much, and we ought to be able to have some sort of policy win here. We’re not getting that. But, gosh, the troops and the Pentagon demand it. They’ve got more weapons to buy. We’ve got to give them whatever they want.’ And they rope-a-dope us into giving them whatever we want,” Lee vented to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “That is why we’re $34 trillion in debt.”

“That,” Lee went on, “is giving money to a Pentagon that is woke. It’s more focused on being politically correct than it is on actually protecting American national security. That, Tony, is giving hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to America’s enemies or those determined to assist America’s enemies,” he said with intensity. “We shouldn’t be facilitating any of that. Not with this administration, not with this Department of Defense, not with Secretary Lloyd Austin, who has betrayed the American people in so many ways. No, sir. Not this time. We’re not following. We’re not falling for that, and neither should any Republican.”

This is a problem, Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Robert Maginnis reminds people, that didn’t happen overnight. This “radical social engineering tainting the Pentagon,” he told The Washington Stand, “arguably began with Bill Clinton, continued under Barack Obama, and now is accelerated under Joe Biden.” Ultimately, the FRC senior fellow for National Defense, said, “This robs our ranks of readiness, wastes funding, and creates a recruiting shortfall by stiff-arming the traditional conservatives that would otherwise fill our ranks.”

Lee is right about the waste, fraud, and abuse, Maginnis agrees. The DOD “doesn’t know how it spends the taxpayer dollars.” And unfortunately, “the problem is … complicated because we face a phalanx of real adversaries equipped with very sophisticated weapons and platforms. We are trying to keep pace, which is incredibly expensive: space race, hypersonics, quantum computer, AI, drones and much, much more.”

The only way to fix this “is to divorce our Defense establishment from the radical political agendas and then focus like a laser on true national security.” That will be expensive, he conceded, “however, it can be done more efficiently, and we ought to cut out the nonsense like DEI training, wasteful investments, and much more.”

Until the president and his team gets “serious enough about our challenges and finding savings for the taxpayer,” Maginnis said, nothing will change. This spending debate is the Republican Party’s opportunity, Perkins insisted. “This is the moment to force them to choose between their woke DEI policies and actually doing what their mission calls for.”