On Tuesday the Senate passed President Trump’s budget legislation. It provides funding for the fiscal year beginning next October. It is famous (notorious) for renewing billions in tax benefits for the very wealthy, while paying (not quite) for these benefits to the rich by cutting tens of billions of dollars from programs benefiting lower-income people, such as Medicaid and food stamps. Bernie Sanders speaks for all of us by calling this budget immoral and obscene.
Military spending is seldom mentioned in news reports about what’s in the budget and what isn’t, so I would like to share some information about the budget’s proposals for military spending. After all, of the hundreds of billions of dollars voted on by Congress, the “discretionary budget,” more than half of that money goes to the Pentagon, to nuclear weapons “modernization,” to maintaining overseas military bases, and things like that. What’s new in the budget is tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by services cuts for the rest of us; but what’s traditional in the budget is the rubber-stamping of vast sums in military spending no matter which political party is in power.
THE BILL PASSED BY THE SENATE INCLUDES A $150 INCREASE IN MILITARY SPENDING, bringing total military spending for the next fiscal year to over $1 trillion. There are many reasons why it is difficult/impossible to derive a total for military spending. In addition to the Pentagon budget, we have Homeland Security, the CIA, nuclear weapons (Dept. of Energy), many spy agencies, and much more.
William D. Hartung, an expert on US military spending, wrote a useful overview article called "Feeding the Warfare State: We Lose, the Weapons Makers Win." He writes:
The bill, passed by the House of Representatives and at present under consideration in the Senate, would allocate tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project. … The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition, and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47. … And just in case you thought this country was only planning to invest in defense against a nuclear strike, a sharp upsurge in spending on new nuclear warheads has been proposed for fiscal year 2026. Thirty billion dollars, to be exact, which would represent a 58% hike from the prior year’s budget.
THE US SPENDS MORE ON ITS MILITARY BUDGET THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY
Right now the USA’s military budget is about the same as the next 9 military spenders in the world. In addition to fielding weapons and soldiers, the USA has about 800 military bases around the world. No other country has more than a handful. And while military spending is good for weapons manufacturers like Lockhead and Raytheon, it is the least efficient way to boost the economy by government investment. Military spending is a drag on our economy.
TRUMP DEMANDS AN INCREASE IN NATO SPENDING. TROUBLE AHEAD.
Medea Benjamin (Code Pink) writes:
At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5% of nations’ GDP by 2035. Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step. But in truth, it represents a major step backwards—away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race that will impoverish societies while enriching weapons contractors. This outrageous 5% spending target didn’t come out of nowhere—it’s the direct result of years of bullying by Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump repeatedly berated NATO members for not spending enough on their militaries, pressuring them to meet a 2% GDP threshold that was already controversial and so excessive that nine NATO countries still fall below that “target”. … Countries across Europe and North America are already slashing public services and yet they are now expected to funnel even more taxpayer money into war preparation. Currently, no NATO country spends more on the military than on health or education. But if they all hit the new 5% military spending goal, 21 of them would spend more on weapons than on schools. [Read More]
WE (AND ALL PEOPLE) DESERVE REAL SECURITY
We are threatened on all sides. Another pandemic could kill millions of people. The climate crisis will disrupt our world in ways we can barely imagine. Our capitalist economies are very unstable, always on the edge of crisis. Yet health care, climate protection, and government regulation of the economy are being defunded, while useless military things are taking more of our collective wealth.
In closing, I refer readers to an article published by The New York Times this week called "How to Wrect the Nation's Health, by the Numbers." The author, a physician and a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University,” writes:
After decades as a physician studying the factors that determine our risks of getting sick and how long we live, I am convinced that the actions of the Trump administration will cost lives. Researchers like me know the data. For years we have warned that Americans have shorter life expectancies and higher disease rates than people in other high-income countries. … The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated thousands of grants, including funding for pandemic prevention, and research grants related to cancer, vaccines and chronic diseases. The loss of research funding will delay medical discoveries. Though the agency publishes a weekly list of terminated grants, the full scope of funding cancellations has been obscured, especially at the National Institutes of Health, the major funder of medical research.
Not only in healthcare, but across the spectrum of necessary human services, Trump’s budget cuts will cause death and misery to many people. This is the real insecurity that we face. Work for peace.
