Pentagon Spending

Bad news: Pentagon spending is up. Good news: your advocacy to counter endless warfare is having an impact. Here are eight signs of progress in the 2023 NDAA.

If the Pentagon and weapons contractors can get their $24 billion wish list for weapons and war—in addition to the $813 billion that President Biden already requested for the Pentagon in FY 2023—then the American people deserve an opportunity to get their unfunded needs met as well. This year’s People’s Unfunded Priorities List highlights five key areas.

Today, the president is expected to sign into law a giant spending package to fund government operations for the rest of fiscal year 2022. The legislation, which places President Joe Biden’s first stamp on the federal budget, will boost Pentagon spending to $782 billion.

In a new study, Salih Booker of the Center for International Policy and Diana Ohlbaum of the Friends Committee on National Legislation explain how the current, militarized U.S. approach to “national security” perpetuates racism and causes immense harm to people of color at home and abroad.

In this interview, I asked Randall about efforts to cut (or at least reduce the rate of growth of) the United States defense budget, which exceeds $750 billion annually, even though other challenges to national security—climate change and pandemic disease, to name just two—loom large.

On Sept. 1, members of the House Armed Services Committee voted 42-17 to boost the Pentagon budget by $23.9 billion above the president’s original request, bringing total Pentagon spending to $740 billion.

If deterrence is synonymous with dominance, no amount of military spending will ever be enough.

In a meeting closed to the public, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bill adding a massive $25 billion to President Joe Biden’s already bloated Pentagon budget request.

General Secretary Diane Randall called on appropriators to cut unnecessary defense spending, improve transparency, and reorient the U.S. national budget towards peace and justice.