While social spending is pared back, Congress passes the largest defense budget since WWII without much of a debate. Why are Democrats doing this?
By Fred Kaplan, Slate
By an overwhelming margin, the House passed a bill to spend $778 billion on defense next year, $25 billion more than what President Joe Biden had requested. The Senate is expected to second the motion within days.
The sum—a five percent increase over last year’s defense bill—amounts to the nation’s largest military-spending bill since World War II, even adjusting for inflation.
Yet no officials or lawmakers have spelled out why the budget—which includes $740 billion for the Pentagon and $28 billion for the Energy Department’s nuclear-weapons programs—needs to be quite this huge. (Another $10 billion is for defense-related activities by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and a few other agencie).
Recent Posts
How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance
Take Action Now From threat modeling to encrypted collaboration apps, we’ve collected experts’ tips and tools for safely and effectively building a…
‘The Siege Must Be Broken’: Countries Called to Ship Fuel to Cuba After Trump Tariffs Struck Down
Take Action Now The US Supreme Court’s ruling “implies that Trump’s recent order imposing tariffs on countries selling oil to Cuba exceeds the…
Elite Depravity in Imperial Decline, A Zero Hour Conversation With Richard Wolff
Take Action Now “The system self-selects for psychopathy… the most sociopathically obsessive competitor and accumulator of personal power and…
Economics of Health For All: The Plan to Put Health at the Heart of the Global Economy
Take Action Now At the World Health Assembly in May, member states may endorse an unprecedented strategy declaring that health is not a cost – but…