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The Secretary of the Defense of the Pete Hegsetth He tries to use two seemingly incompatible forces: the Pentagon and the Department of Government Efficiency. First, he ordered the army to flood 8% of his budget away from low priority cases such as climate change in order to better align with President Donald Trump programs “America First”. If implemented, the budget shift would result in 40% by adjusting to the financing of Trump’s priorities compared to DOD’s standard five-year defense program.
Hegsetth emphasized that his Directive “is not a cut”. Instead, he “diverts and re -invests existing means of construction of force.” Second, Hegsetth admitted that Doge officially entered the Pentagon. Doge, he explained, was “embedded” in the efforts of DOD “to find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget in the Federal Government.”
Hegsetth is sharply trying to exploit DOGE and implement the much-needed comprehensive reform of the Pentagon budget. His plan of redistribution assumes that savings from wasteful and unnecessary programs should be high enough to take pressure for more harmful reductions, potentially in areas that are essential for war. His success will depend on whether Doge will accept the Hegsets plan of a budget redistribution of 8% or requires covering blankets on the pentagon. President Trump, who indicated that he would allow his cabinet secretaries to crack on the cuts first instead of Doge, will be a key player in Hegseth’s Gambit.
The Hegsetth Secretary says that Dod does not do ‘shit of climate change’
Hegseth’s position is similar to the Second Reform Minister of Defense, Robert Gates. Fifteen years ago, Gates warned that after a decade of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “goose defense” was over. Given the budget reduction, Gates reached an agreement with President Barack Obama Any effectiveness and above -ground savings He discovered that he could re -introduce himself to the structure and priorities of modernization – instead of used as an excuse to reduce the budget of the pentagon.
The Minister of Defense Peta Hegsetth participates in the PT -us 1st Battalion, 10th group of special forces (Airborne), a Battalion of the US Army special forces based in Stuttgart, Germany. (Defsec hegsetth on x)
Gates found $ 100 billion in savings by reducing Pentagon performer, canceling weapons like a sea expedicial fighting vehicle and closing excess organizations like the Command of Common Forces, but Obama was renewed on his promise. He claimed that he could not justify the actual growth in the budget of defense in the midst of the debt crisis. Nine months later, Obama signed the Law on Budget Control in the Law, with catastrophic consequences for defense. In 10 years after BCA was adopted, the Pentagon budget was reduced by 14%, which is a total of almost $ 1 trillion.
Trump will determine if his team repeats the same mistake as Obama and Gates. Unlike in 2010, the role is even bigger and there is a consensus in Washington that America needs military accumulation to face Chinese unprecedented military modernization. In the past two years, PrC has enjoyed an increase of 15% in the defense budget. This year, the Chinese growth of the defense budget will exceed Chinese economic growth, revealing where the actual priorities of XI lie.
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The Congress seems to make its part to help. The reconciliation process that is undergoing Capitol Hill can add $ 150 billion to the defense dollars in the next decade. Reconciliation is an opportunity to cross out of perennial dysfunctional annual approval approval accounts.
The measure of perennial funding would allow Pentagon to recapitalize an industrial base that has not seen an upgrade since the 1980s.
Financing defense to the extent of reconciliation is especially crucial for these priorities because, as Hegsetth warned, a significant increase in defense may not come to the president’s own request for budget. This reality explains why Hegsetth said that the Pentagon may have to do with the already available resources and “ensure that every dollar goes on.” Hegsets order could outgrow at least $ 50 billion in this fiscal year and nearly $ 250 billion during the life of a defense program.
Internal efficiency in accordance with the fact that Gates found more than a decade ago in combination with capital, an increase in reconciliation measure could provide transformative results: lean, more agile pentagon that is now able to confirm the industrial base, arrange new technologies and catalize others in regional priorities such as the production of charging critical for Chinese struggle. The predictable flow of capital would cross the long way to achieve the priority of Trump administration such as spreading the capacity of shipbuilding and the national system of the Golden Dome defense defense.
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Trump said: “We will again build the strongest army the world has ever seen. We will exchange our success not only by the battles we win, but also the wars we end – and most importantly, the wars we never go into ..”
Whether the Doge Plones is DOD’s excess waste and inefficiency, or is it that breaks through the pentagon programs – equally good and bad – in the hands of President Trump. Uniquely, he can prevent the mistakes of his predecessors and enable Pentagon to invest in himself and make the goal listed in his platform to “strengthen and modernize our army, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world.”
Michael Stanton is a research assistant at the Reagan Institute.
