The short answer to the question posed in the title of this piece is probably not. But Speaker-elect Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to the Freedom Caucus to seek a spending freeze at 2022 levels has sent shock waves through official Washington. Why? Because a freeze would wipe out the $100 billion that the Pentagon and Congress added to 2022 levels in the Fiscal Year 2023 budget that President Biden passed into law last month.
As I noted in a recent essay at Responsible Statecraft, there is ample room to make substantial reductions in current Pentagon spending levels while providing a more effective defense. But this column raises a different question: do the Pentagon and its allies in industry and on Capitol Hill have anything to fear from the Freedom Caucus?
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