By an overwhelming bipartisan margin of 88-11, the US Senate voted Wednesday to approve the largest military budget in history, nearly $770 billion, some $25 billion more than the Biden administration had requested. The legislation passed the House of Representatives last week by a similar bipartisan margin, 363-70, and it now goes to the White House for President Joe Biden’s[Read More...]
Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters. And yet — big surprise! — there’s always plenty of money for the Pentagon. In fiscal year 2022, in fact, Congress is being especially[Read More...]
by Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung Even as Congress moves to increase the Pentagon budget well beyond the astronomical levels proposed by the Biden administration, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. A rational defense policy could yield far more in[Read More...]
A 2019 budget plan cooked up by House Republicans aims at cutting all federal spending that isn’t defense related in an effort to reign in the debt problem. It includes massive cuts to medicare, medicaid, Social Security, education grants, welfare, and other programs aimed and softening the blow of America’s growing poverty rate. Meanwhile, this comes about while Trump is cutting taxes on the rich, introducing a ‘Space Force’, and providing massive increases to military spending.
The National Priorities Project headlines “U.S. Military Spending vs. the World” and reports: “World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015.
The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total.” But it can’t be believed, because, even if other nations aren’t under-reporting their military expenditures, the U.S. certainly is — under-reporting it by about 50%.
U.S. forces patrol on the outskirts of the Syrian town, Manbij, a flashpoint between Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, in al-Asaliyah village, Aleppo province, Syria, March 7, 2017. (Arab 24 via AP)
Trump’s budget for 2018, proposes cutting lots of stuff, from the EPA to the NEA and even small cuts at NASA. One of the few departments that will not see any cuts was the US Department of Defense.
