Huge Military Budgets Make Us Broke, Not Safe | By Miriam Pemberton | Common Dreams

Huge Military Budgets Make Us Broke, Not Safe | By Miriam Pemberton | Common Dreams

 

 

We’re all tense. Hearing about our fellow citizens in Hawaii
scrambling around, looking for a place to hide from a nuclear bomb, will
do that to you. So will contests between two unstable world leaders
over the size of their nuclear buttons.

Now, some politicians say they’ll protect us by adding massive
amounts to the Pentagon budget. This seems like a no-brainer: feel
threatened, give more money to the military. But it isn’t.

Practically everyone from the president on down, though, seems to
take it as a given. “In confronting these horrible dangers,” Donald
Trump said during his State of the Union, “I’m calling on Congress” to “fully fund our great military.”

The president and his party are now looking to add somewhere between
$30 and $70 billion more in military spending to their budget for next
year — on top of the increases for this year. Democrats seem willing to
go along, with a few caveats.

 

"Worse
still, the military can’t even say what it’s actually spending — it’s
still the only federal agency that can’t pass an audit." (Photo: David B. Gleason/Flickr/cc)