Commentary: Why is the Defense Department immune from budget cuts?

The only thing we can say for certain about ongoing budget talks between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is that neither man will walk away from the table completely satisfied.

An agreement on the debt ceiling and future budgets was finally struck over the weekend between Biden and McCarthy. The deal would lift the debt ceiling past the 2024 presidential election and cap discretionary spending over the next two years. If this framework sounds familiar, that’s because it is; President Obama and House Republicans passed a similar fiscal arrangement, known as the Budget