As we said when the Biden Administration released some scant details of the FY22 “discretionary budget” there are sure to be cries of “President Biden is gutting the Pentagon budget!” from certain quarters in Washington today.

We disagree.

A topline of $729.9 for the Pentagon (vice the entire national security establishment) is an increase over the Trump Administration’s request in Fiscal Year 2021 of $705.4 billion (not adjusted for inflation.) Take a moment to peruse the colorful TCS pie chart from last year’s budget request.

Note that the “apples to apples” equivalence is the Pentagon base budget number of $636.4 billion plus the Overseas Contingency Operations account number of $69 billion which adds up to $705.4 billion. If you run that number through the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation calculator, an imperfect tool, an inflation adjusted number for the Pentagon would be $719.1 billion.

So, if the CPI inflator is our guide, the Pentagon budget will decrease by 1.2 percent.

But that’s just the Pentagon. What we think of as “national defense” spending includes billions of dollars tucked in other corners of the federal government such as the Department of Energy, which is requesting almost $28 billion for defense-related work. But more on that later.

All told, compared to last year’s $740.5 billion total “National Defense” request, the Pentagon is looking at an increase of roughly 3.8 percent.