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Pentagon Budget

Why Can’t We Commit War Crimes And Destroy The Planet…

Sometimes it doesn’t seem like two things are connected. But deep down you know they are. You try to grasp the correlation, but it’s elusive. …I think I’ve found the answer. Why can’t we, the United States, regularly blow up fishermen off the coast of Venezuela — without a judge, jury, or relevant jurisdiction — without 49% of American children languishing in or near poverty?? Why can’t we send tens of billions of dollars to help Israel commit genocide while also having affordable housing for Americans? Rather than the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home doubling since January 2020?

Pentagon And Military-Related Spending In Congressional Bill HR1

It is unusual for reconciliation bills, such as H.R. 1, to include substantial funding for the Department of Defense or other military-related programs in other departments. However, H.R. 1 breaks from precedent by allocating $156 billion to “national defense.” This is problematic for four main reasons: (1) It benefits weapons-makers and contractors more than service members; (2) It lacks details on specific spending categories, effectively making it a slush fund; (3) It incentivizes future lawmakers to skirt the regular budget process, which is more deliberative and transparent than the reconciliation process; and (4) It increases Pentagon and military-related spending by over 13 percent from FY25, pushing “national defense” spending beyond the $1 trillion mark.

Senate Advances Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, Includes $150 Billion For Military

The Senate on Tuesday advanced a massive spending package, dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill” by President Trump, that includes $150 billion in extra military spending. The bill passed in a vote of 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, as three Republicans — Senators Rand Paul (KY), Susan Collins (ME), and Thom Tillis (NC) — joined Democrats in voting against the sprawling piece of legislation. House GOP leaders have scheduled a vote for the bill on Wednesday and are hoping to get it to President Trump’s desk by this Friday, though uncertainty remains about how fast it will get through the chamber.

Why Does ‘National Security’ Always Mean More War, Not More Health Care?

On March 17, 2025, DefenseScoop reported that Congress approved $141 billion for Pentagon research and development — an amount larger than the budgets of most federal agencies, and close to the size of the seven next largest military budgets around the world. Yet, as usual, there was little debate. Instead, military leaders and lawmakers lamented that the figure was $7 billion less than last year due to budget caps set under the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, as if anything short of perpetual increases is a crisis. Meanwhile, how many times have we heard that there’s no money for universal pre-K? That expanding Medicare is too expensive? That raising the minimum wage would hurt the economy?

Mexico’s Leftist President Rips Trump Tariff Threat

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday sharply criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's threat to impose a 25% tariff on all imported goods from Canada and Mexico, calling the proposal a potentially disastrous distraction from meaningful solutions to drug trafficking and mass migration. "Migration and drug consumption in the United States cannot be addressed through threats or tariffs," Sheinbaum, a member of Mexico's leftist Morena party, wrote in a letter to Trump. "What is needed is cooperation and mutual understanding to tackle these significant challenges."

There’s No Good Reason To Spend Nearly $1 Trillion On Our Military

If you looked at the U.S. military budget without knowing otherwise, you’d probably guess we were in the midst of World War III. Our military spending is now the highest it’s been at any point since World War II — and Congress keeps adding more. The GOP-led House of Representatives just passed legislation that will increase military spending to $895 billion, while the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill that would total $923 billion. Those totals don’t even include the military aid to Ukraine and Israel that was included in the $95 billion war package Congress passed this spring. We’re teetering closer and closer to a $1 trillion military budget.

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All

We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy. Bombs also make people rich. When a bomb explodes, someone profits. And when someone profits, bombs claim more unseen victims. Every dollar spent on a bomb is a dollar not spent saving a life from a preventable death, a dollar not spent curing cancer, a dollar not spent educating children. That’s why, so long ago, retired five-star general and President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightly called spending on bombs and all things military a “theft.”

The Biggest Financial Scam In Human History

It's the largest financial scam in human history. $1 Trillion a year of your tax dollars goes to the Pentagon and they can't say where it's going. In fact they recently said they can't account for 63% of their assets — as they failed their sixth straight audit. But we do know they buy $52,000 trash cans. And we know they once lost $12 Billion of shrink-wrapped dollar bills in Iraq. And that's just the beginning of it. Most of the money is used to destroy lives around the globe. In this episode of America Inc. Lee Camp reveals all the dirty details with a dose of comedy thrown in to help the truth go down easier.

The ‘Ghost Budget’: How America Pays For Endless War

The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were enabled by a historically unprecedented combination of budgetary procedures and financing methods. Unlike all previous U.S. wars, the post-9/11 wars were funded without higher taxes or non-war budget cuts, and through a separate budget. This set of circumstances – one that I have termed the “Ghost Budget” – enabled successive administrations to prosecute the wars with limited congressional oversight and minimal transparency and public debate. I adopted the name “Ghost Budget” because the term “ghost” appeared frequently in post-9/11 government reports in reference to funds allocated to people, places, or projects that turned out to be phantoms.

The Deadly Influence Of The Military Industrial Complex At COP28

We hear about the growing influence of fossil fuel, nuclear and Big Agriculture corporations over the United Nations' Conference of Parties (COP) meetings, but hardly anything about the presence of weapons makers and NATO leaders. Clearing the FOG speaks with Canadian environmental lawyer and peace activist Tamara Lorincz, who reports about the meetings and outcomes of the recently-concluded COP28. She is part of an organizing effort to highlight the carbon footprint of Western militaries and the significant contributions of NATO countries to the climate crisis. Lorincz points out the great discrepancies between what Western countries spend each year on their militaries (hundreds of billions of dollars) and what they are willing to contribute to the climate change fund (tens of millions of dollars) for reparations and relief in impacted nations.

Senate Passes Massive $886 Billion National Defense Authorization Act

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the mammoth $886 billion 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the Pentagon and military spending in other government agencies. The bill passed in a vote of 87-13, with six Democrats, six Republicans, and one Independent voting against it. This NDAA now heads to the House, where it’s expected to pass in a vote on Thursday as the bill is the version that the two chambers negotiated. The NDAA includes an amendment to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which gives the FBI the power to conduct warrantless spying of foreign targets and Americans they interact with.

Full-Dress Irrationality

Whenever Joe Biden speaks, you have to make sure your bullshit detector is switched on, to borrow Hemingway’s pungent phrase. As is well-documented, our president has spent his public life making it up as he goes along. No surprise, there was a lot of boilerplate junk in the two much-noted speeches Biden gave last week, one in Tel Aviv after attending a session of Israel’s war cabinet, the other when he dropped it on the American public that they were about to spend a lot more money financing Israeli violence, war in Ukraine and provocation across the Taiwan Strait.  We had better listen carefully this time.

Public Need Versus The Business Of War

The American public is hurting. The bare necessities—clean water, nutritious food, and affordable housing—are hard to come by. Tap water is contaminated with lead, PFAS, and other pollutants. The water systems that serve cities and towns suffer additional stressors, including drought, overuse, and a failure to incorporate greywater systems. And, like many necessities, you have to pay for it in the United States: Water utility prices continue to go up and up. Hunger is a severe problem. Insufficient money and/or access means that millions of families regularly go hungry. Massive corporations dominate what is available in a grocery store, and much of what they produce is innutritious.

Danny Haiphong Addresses UN Security Council On NATO’s Ukraine Aid

On August 17, 2023, Danny Haiphong spoke to spoke the latest convening of the United Nations Security Council on the dangers that Western arms to Ukraine poses to international peace and stability. He said, "Today I am here as a journalist who has dedicated the last ten years of my life writing about and speaking out against the long record of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by my country of birth, the United States. I don't consider this a hobby or even a profession but rather a duty to all of humanity and those who want to see a better and more peaceful future. I am here to as a US citizen who has witnessed tens of billions of US tax dollars go to funding and arming a proxy war against Russia while people in the US, ordinary people, suffer from rising levels of poverty, homelessness, suicide and economic insecurity."

Amid ‘Staggering’ Ukrainian Toll, Biden Seeks Billions More For War

The Biden administration is asking Congress for an additional $24 billion for the Ukraine proxy war, more than half of it in military aid. The request comes one week after a CNN poll showed, for the first time, that a majority of Americans oppose additional funding to Kiev. For a White House committed to ensuring a Russian “quagmire” in Ukraine, public opinion is of secondary importance. Two months into a widely hyped yet now faltering Ukrainian counteroffensive, a fresh influx of NATO weaponry appears necessary to prolong the war. In one of several gloomy assessments to appear in US establishment media, a senior western diplomat tells CNN that the prospect that Ukrainian forces can “make progress that would change the balance of this conflict” is “extremely, highly unlikely.”
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