Edward R. Fried

When President Ford presented his 1976 defense budget to the Congress in January 1975, the Administration stressed the need to reverse what it described as a 10-year trend of declining U.S. military capabilities relative to those of the U.S.S.R. As a consequence, the President requested an appropriation of $105 billion for the Department of Defense, an increase of 15 percent over the previous year. About half of this increase was simply to offset the effect of inflation. The other half, however, was to fund the first-year costs of a continuing program to increase the size of conventional forces and to expand nuclear capabilities at a fairly rapid rate.