Unhappy Valentine's

摘要

To couples and card manufacturers, 14 February means Valentine's day but for the Obama administration it was the date for submitting a five-year spending plan to Congress. At this juncture, the US defence industry is on the brink of a down-cycle. US military spending tends to ebb and rise again across roughly 15-year periods. The great 1980s military build-up preceded the 1990s crash. The cycle began reversing in the late 1990s. New heights were hit in the five years following 9/11. This time the fiscal apogee may have arrived slightly prematurely. Pentagon officials asked for a comparatively paltry $18 billion budget increase this year - hardly an overreach - but Congress has not been obliging, slashing $8 billion off the top in a preliminary review by Senate appropriators, then holding the entire federal budget in limbo since the fiscal year began in October.