Joe Biden has sent a request to the US Congress for the fiscal year 2022 military budget of $715 billion. This figure is lower than the one allocated to the Pentagon for 2022 by Trump but slightly higher than the 2021 military spending.
On Friday, 9 April, the US President made his first request for the 2022 military budget that would be allocated to the Department of Defense for the fiscal year 2022.
Joe Biden proposes a figure of 715 billion dollars, which is seven billion dollars less than the last forecast for future spending by the US armed forces, made by Donald Trump at the end of his presidency.
The figure marks a slight increase from the total of $705.4 billion allocated directly to the Pentagon for the fiscal year 2021.
Within the budget, Joe Biden proposed to remove spending on Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). For the year 2021, this line has been forecast at $69 billion.
The world’s largest military budget far from clear
For the first time in a decade, the 2022 US fiscal budget will allow Congress to reallocate money between military and civilian spending and vice versa, Bloomberg reports.
In the political context across the Atlantic, this means that Joe Biden’s proposal can be reviewed by both Democrats, who may call for a larger reduction in the defense budget, and Republicans, Bloomberg continues.
The latter will most likely insist on an annual increase of 3% to 5% in the budgetary resources allocated to national security – the growth rate announced in 2017 by the Pentagon for the period 2018-2023.
In the coming months, the President of the United States is expected to present a more detailed national budget proposal to Congress and the American people.
