#美国国防预算再创新高##美国国债规模越来越大,怎么还?##美国国债#
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为避免政府停摆，拜登3月24日签署包括国防预算在内的1.2万亿美元临时开支法案
美国应向国防部拨多少钱一直是政府开支辩论中一个极大的争议问题。
在经历了巨大的混乱之后，在财政年度已过一半的情况下，国会于2024年3月23日通过了在2024财年预算内向国防部拨款8250亿美元的法案，以避免政府部分关闭，所拨付的金额略低于政府要求的8420亿美元。不久之前的3月11日，乔·拜登总统政府向国会提交了2025的财政预算申请，其中包括8500亿美元的国防预算。
然而，一些人仍然表示，这些巨额资金仍然不够。例如，密西西比州共和党参议员罗杰·威克在传统基金会的一个活动上表示他支持将国防预算增加到1.4万亿美元，宣称“美国应该寻求战胜中国和俄罗斯，而不仅仅是设法与它们竞争。”
但是，一万亿美元的国防预算并不意味着美国就将“战胜”中国或俄罗斯，更多的支出并不自动等同于更高质量的国防—但这在辩论中经常被忽略。
为向国会要钱，美国防部长和军队总参谋长出席国会关于国际预算的听证会
美国的军事开支超过了中国、俄罗斯、印度、沙特阿拉伯、英国、德国、法国、韩国、日本加上乌克兰的总和。如果开支与国防质量成正比，国家安全现在应该不会是一个非常令人担忧的问题。
布鲁金斯学会的迈克尔·E·奥汉伦和亚历杭德拉·罗查写道：“大多数人应理性地认为，这并非完全是关于数量或哪个国家花费更多的问题，而是关于质量和我们用钱得到什么--关于什么军事力量能使我们的军队在对国家最重要的军事场景下维持军事优势的问题。”
卡托研究所的高级研究员埃里克·戈麦斯认为，放弃军事主导的目标--转而与盟友分担负担--和减少人员将有助于减少军事开支，但仍然能够应对现代战争的需求。
戈麦斯写道：“遏制是一种能更好地反应对美国本土的微小威胁和让盟友采取更多努力维护自己后院稳定的更有效、更便宜的极好战略。”他还建议将同时拥有陆射、潜射、空射核弹能力的核三角转向二分体，淘汰陆基洲际弹道导弹，转而开发潜射洲际弹道导弹和战略轰炸机。考虑到陆军发起的旨在保护美国本土不受“偶发的”俄罗斯洲际弹道导弹和“蓄意”发射的其它国家洲际弹道导弹威胁的反导战略“哨兵计划”出现的混乱，以及未来更新洲际弹道导弹计划的长期拖延和成本增加，这一点尤其重要。
同样需要注意的是，虽然国防支出表面看起来可能是持平的，但实际上增加的支出却描绘了一幅不同的图景。因为大部分与国防相关的支出并不直接体现在年度财政预算内的国防预算上，而是还包括政府需要支付其他开支和国债利息。
美国国债总额已经超过34万亿美元，国防和战争开支是主要原因之一
国会预算办公室最近的一项分析预测，到2024年，联邦政府需要支付的债务利息就将达8700亿美元，这不仅比2023年的利息增加了32%，而且超过了国防预算。预计2034年政府需要支付的利息将高达1.628万亿美元。
美国赤字正在上升有无数原因，尤其是社会保障、医疗保险和医疗补助，但最大的贡献者之一是过去的战争和国防支出。根据布朗大学沃森国际和公共事务研究所的一份报告，9·11事件后的战争主要是通过借钱来支持的。“到2022财年，美国政府在这些战争上欠下的利息就超过1万亿美元。”
这个问题不会消失。沃森研究所的高级研究员海蒂·佩尔蒂埃在2020年写道：“即使从今天起美国停止承担任何新的与战争有关的费用，它未来仍将需要继续支付战争债务的利息”，在未来几十年，仅9·11后的战争利息支出就将达到数万亿美元。
再加上与国防有关的非自由支配开支，比如退伍军人福利等与国防预算分开的支出，美国的年度国防开支已经突破了1万亿美元大关。
换句话说，政府仍然在并将继续为之前的军事活动花钱。政策制定者在批准年度国防预算时最好牢记这一点。
U.S. Defense Spending Continues To Spiral Out of Control. By Varad Raigaonkar on Reason.com. April 15, 2024.
How much the U.S. should allocate to the Department of Defense remains a contentious topic in the debate over government spending.
After a great deal of chaos, on March 23—about halfway through the fiscal year—Congress approved an appropriations bill worth $825 billion for defense in FY 2024 to avoid a partial government shutdown, less than the $842 billion request by the administration. Not long before, on March 11, President Joe Biden's Administration submitted their request for FY 2025, which included $850 billion for defense.
And yet some still say those massive budgets are not enough. Sen. Roger Wicker (R–Miss.), for example, expressed support for a $1.4 trillion budget for defense at a Heritage Foundation event. "The U.S. should seek to win, not just manage, against China and Russia," he said.
But a trillion-dollar defense budget doesn't mean the U.S. will "win" against China or Russia. More spending does not automatically equate to higher quality defense—something that is often lost in this debate.
The U.S. spends more on the military than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. If the amount spent were directly proportional to quality of defense, national security wouldn't be much of a concern right now.
"Many would reasonably argue that it is not all about quantity or about which country spends more, but about quality and what we get for the money—about what capabilities would allow our forces to sustain military advantages for the most relevant military scenarios of importance to the nation," write Michael E. O'Hanlon and Alejandra Rocha at the Brookings Institution.
Eric Gomez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, argues that cutting away from the goal of military dominance—instead sharing the burden with allies—and scaling down personnel would help reduce military spending while still addressing the needs of modern warfare.
"Restraint is a more effective, less expensive grand strategy that better reflects the minuscule threat to the U.S. homeland and the capacity for allies to do more to uphold stability in their own backyards," Gomez writes. He also recommends shifting away from a nuclear triad to a dyad, eliminating the land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and instead developing submarine-launched ICBM and strategic bombers. This is especially pertinent after considering the mess that has been the Sentinel program, the future ICBM replacement that is running wildly off course with protracted delays and stratospheric increases in cost.
Also important to note is that while defense spending may appear to be flatlining on the surface, added context paints a different picture. Much of defense-related expenditures don't fall directly under annual fiscal budgets but are instead wrapped up in what the government pays on the national debt interest.
A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal spending on debt interests alone would reach $870 billion in 2024, which is not only a 32 percent increase from 2023's interest but is larger than the defense budget itself. The projected interest payment in 2034 is $1.628 trillion.
There are myriad reasons the U.S. deficit is rising—notably Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—but one of the biggest contributions is past spending on war and defense. According to a report from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, post-9/11 wars have been paid for mostly by borrowing money. "Through FY2022, the U.S. government owes over $1 trillion in interest on these wars," the report says.
That problem isn't going away. "Even if the United States were to stop incurring any new war-related expenses as of today, the U.S. would continue to make interest payments on war debt well into the future," wrote Heidi Peltier, a senior researcher at the Watson Institute, in 2020. Interest payments on these post-9/11 wars alone would reach several trillion dollars in upcoming decades.
Add to that the nondiscretionary spending on defense, like veterans benefits, which is separate from the U.S. defense budget, and annual defense spending has already crossed the $1 trillion mark.
In other words, the government is still paying for, and will continue to pay for, prior military activities. Policy makers would do well to keep that in mind when approving annual defense budgets.