The truth about the sequester

This is not “the truth.” This is a litany of blatant lies, coming, of course, from the anti-defense leftist Cato Institute.
Firstly, sequestration will set defense spending back by an entire decade – to FY2003, not FY2006, levels (to $469 bn, the lowest level since FY2003). Secondly, even FY2006 levels would be woefully inadequate today, because in FY2006, the world was nowhere near as dangerous, and America’s peer competitors not nearly as strong, as they are today; China’s and Russia’s military buildups were nowhere nearly as advanced as they are not.
Thirdly, the peak of Cold War military spending was in FY1987, when the US spent $613 bn on the military. Under sequestration, the post-sequester FY2013 total military budget (counting the entire DOD budget) will be less than $533 bn (minus sequestration of war accounts), plus less than $27 bn or so for outside-DOD defense programs, a total of less than $550 bn.
Fourthly, China’s real military budget is between $180 bn and $250 bn – not the mere official figure of $111 bn that the CATO Institute wrongly accepts as 100% true and propagates as “truth”. And then, one has to multiple the $180 bn – $250 bn figure by a factor of at least 3 to account for PPP differenes between the US and China.
Similarly, CATO’s figures for Russia are totally false, because they are both understated (Russia’s official military budget is only a small fraction of its real annual military spending) and not accounted for PPP differences.
Fifth, contrary to CATO’s lies, the US now faces THREE existential threats – Putinist Russia flying nuclear-armed bombers into US airspace and around Guam, an equally aggressive Communist China, and an ICBM-and-nuclear-armed North Korea. To deeply cut America’s defense spending in the face of these threats would be worse than utter folly; it would be suicidal.
And in case CATO hasn’t noticed, defense spending has already been cut several times since 2009.
All of CATO’s claims are blatant lies, as are the claims of this blog. Shame on CATO and on this blog’s authors for lying to the public so blatantly.