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Pentagon Budget

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

July 20, 2024 Lindsay Koshgarian, In These Times. , , ,
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

June 3, 2024 David Vine and Theresa (Isa) Arriola, TomDispatch.com. , , ,
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

January 29, 2024 Lee Camp, BreakThrough News. , , ,
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

January 8, 2024 Linda Bilmes, Scheer Post. , , , ,
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

December 18, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , ,
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

December 15, 2023 Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. , , , , ,
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

October 28, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , ,
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

September 16, 2023 Christian Sorenson, Substack. , , ,
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

August 19, 2023 Danny Haiphong, Substack. , , , , ,
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

August 12, 2023 Aaron Mate, Substack. , , ,
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.”

Don’t Fall For The Traps In The Humongous Military Budget

July 22, 2023 Richie Merino, Workers World. , , ,
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a record-breaking military budget of $886 billion for the coming fiscal year. The National Defense Authorization Act was passed by lawmakers on July 14 by a slim margin of 219 to 210, with the majority of Democrats opposing it. However, the bill is unlikely to be approved in the Senate, as Republicans have introduced amendments that would restrict Pentagon funding to access abortions and prohibit gender-affirming medical care and hormone therapy for transgender personnel. In addition, the display of LGBTQIA2S+ Pride flags at military bases was banned. Rep. Greg Stanton from Arizona has pointed out that nearly 50% of women in the military do not have access to abortion care, largely due to state bans, making it difficult for them to obtain this necessary medical treatment.

The Federal Debt Trap: Issues And Possible Solutions

July 13, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
“Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy,” wrote the New York Times Editorial Board in a July 7 opinion piece, “the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.” Titled “America Is Living on Borrowed Money,” the editorial observes that over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year. By 2029, just the interest on the debt is projected to exceed the national defense budget, which currently eats up over half of the federal discretionary budget. In 2029, net interest on the debt is projected to total $1.07 trillion, while defense spending is projected at $1.04 trillion.

Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy: US Boosts Military Budget, Restricts Food Stamps

June 3, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
The US government reached its debt limit of $31.4 trillion in early 2023. This unleashed a deluge of debate as to whether or not the Treasury was going to default, and how a deeply divided Congress could come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The constant chatter in the mainstream corporate media overlooked the real controversy, however. The reality is that practically no one in Washington truly cares about the US national debt. In fact, in a bipartisan deal negotiated in late May to raise the debt ceiling, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy agreed not to cut but rather to increase the already massive military budget from roughly $800 billion to $886 billion.

Report: Over 4.5 Million People Killed In Post 9/11 Wars

May 17, 2023 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
A new study from the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute estimates that over 4.5 million people have died from wars launched by the west in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks. The study estimates that between 906,000 to 937,000 people have been killed as a direct result of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. “These countries have experienced the most violent wars in which the US government has been involved in the name of counterterrorism since 2001,” the report highlights. Moreover, 3.6 million people are estimated to have died indirectly from the effects of western wars, including economic collapse, food insecurity, destruction of public health facilities, environmental contamination, and recurring violence.

US Makes Up 40% Of Global Military Spending, 10x Russia, 3x China

May 3, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , ,
The US military spent $877 billion, 10 times more than Russia ($86.4 billion), and three times more than China ($292 billion). US military expenditure in 2022 was bigger than the next 10 largest spenders combined. This means the Pentagon spent more than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. This is according to data published this April by the Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI calculated that the planet’s total military expenditure was $2.24 trillion in 2022. The United States, at $877 billion, thus made up 39.2% of total global military spending.
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