AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter for a timely discussion of U.S. defense budgets, of the changing strategic landscape in the U.S. and the force that this landscape demands.

The U.S. defense budget serves as a sign of how America has prioritized its global commitments and the bridge between strategy and implementation, where military capabilities define the roles and missions of America’s men and women in uniform. The defense budget has broad global impact, but understanding it is not always easy. As military spending finds its way into the nation’s headlines, learn more about how America allocates resources to support its strength abroad.

Within a plan to reduce outlays by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, Paul Ryan has found a way to replace $214 billion of the $487 billion in military spending cuts in Obama's budget.

At this event, we will discuss the Obama administration's FY 2013 defense budget and the broader context behind its new strategic guidance.

President Obama’s budget cuts the U.S. military while asking those in uniform to accept more risk in their jobs and providing fewer resources to fulfill their missions. Congress should reject these proposals as going too far for too few and pass a budget resolution that adds additional resources to properly fund military readiness and modernization.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Navy and Air Force escaped the budget drill mostly intact while the Army endured the bulk of cuts. But the truth is that all of the services are shrinking and aging under the Obama budget.

The Administration’s growing gap between the newest defense strategy and budget makes more sense when viewed in the context of the administration’s domestic priorities. Just as President Obama wants to raise taxes on some Americans in order to pay for others, the administration is weakening America’s military strength in order to pay for expansive domestic federal programs.

Make no mistake: as defense budgets go down, so does America’s capacity to give its men and women in uniform the tools they need to defend our interests abroad—as well as our ability to sustain the world-class scientists, engineers, designers, and machinists that comprise our defense manufacturing industrial base. The military deserves better than this budget, and so does America.