Pentagon Budget Should Be Slashed By $100 Billion, Say Progressives

By Sharon Zhang, Truthout

While the defense budget continues its decades-long upward spiral, Democrats in the House are waging a push to do something unprecedented: take billions from the defense budget and redirect the money to social spending.

On Monday, Representatives Barbara Lee (D-California) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) introduced a bill that would cut $100 billion from the defense budget — which, for this year, was a towering $782 billion. This would likely be the largest year-over-year budget cut that the Pentagon has ever seen.

The bill would direct the Department of Defense budget for fiscal year 2023 to be calculated by subtracting $100 billion from the amount appropriated for the defense budget for 2022. While this would still be a massive budget of around $680 billion, it would be a major first step toward progressives’ longtime goal of slashing the defense budget to an amount comparable to that of other countries — or nixing it altogether.