More Money for a Woke Pentagon?

From the Washington Stand:

. . . . 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 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.