Senator Inhofe: U.S. Defense Budget Must Match Threats Posed by China’s Military Build-Up

China is feverishly building a military that exceeds ours. And what is the Biden Administration doing to respond? They are defunding our military, to finance (here, here, here) the policies of the radical Left.

Inhofe: U.S. Defense Budget Must Match Threats Posed by China’s Military Build-Up

By Inhfoe.Senate, April 21, 2021

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), lead Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), spoke on the Senate floor today about China’s imposing military build-up and the need for the United States to increase investment in national defense to deter Chinese aggression.

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The other week, President Biden released his “skinny budget” — which gave us a topline for defense of $715 billion. Make no mistake: This is a cut because it doesn’t keep up with inflation

It definitely doesn’t provide the three to five percent real growth we really need to take on the threats posed by our adversaries like China. 

When it comes to China, there are two big reasons we need to make sure our budget matches our strategy. Number one: China is spending more on their military than ever before. Number two: As a result, they’re getting more technologically advanced, and starting to sway the military balance of power in their favor.

The threat the Chinese military poses is not a distant threat. It’s not a 2035 or 2040 problem — it’s a problem we face now, and it only gets worse over time.

Admiral Davidson told the Armed Services Committee he expects the threat to manifest “this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

So, today, I’d like to spend some time detailing what the Chinese military is doing. This is what we’re up against. This is why it’s so important that we get our defense budget right.

Let’s start with China’s military budget. Since 2000, Beijing’s spending on the People’s Liberation Army has gone up 450 percent.

Compare Beijing’s buildup with the rest of East Asia. At the same time, our core allies and partners in the region — that’s Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan — have had basically flat defense spending since 2000.

Or compare it with our own military spending. As I mentioned on the floor a couple weeks ago, at the same time China was adding $200 billion to their defense budget, we let ours shrink by $400 billion.

We’re certainly not provoking them with defense investment. And we’ve barely touched our force posture in the Western Pacific over the last two decades.

So, if anything, our lack of action — our lack of investment — is what is provoking China into thinking they can push around and threaten our friends in the region.

The Biden administration says they want to take allies and partners seriously. So, we should listen when they say they’re concerned about Chinese aggression.

Now, another progressive talking point is that the United States spends more on defense than the next 10 or 12 countries combined. That’s not true.

The reality is that any honest comparison of numbers shows that, combined, the Chinese and Russians almost certainly spend more than us in real terms.

China’s purchasing power is significantly greater than ours because they pay their workers next to nothing and have much lower material costs.

They also focus their defense spending on hard power — into planes, ships, missiles, and the like. Why? Because they don’t take care of their people.

At least a third of our military budget goes to supporting our people — our service members and their families, and o

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