When there is talk about raising funding for a program that benefits the needy invariably the question ‘how is it going to paid for’ follows. That question is never raised when it comes to military spending.
On Monday [article posted 9/20/2017] evening, the Senate passed – in bipartisan fashion – a policy bill that set the parameters for military spending in 2018 that tops $700bn, including tens of billions in spending for wars Trump has been expanding in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Amazingly, the bill far exceeds even the increase in spending that the Trump administration was asking for, and as the Associated Press reported, it would put “the US armed forces on track for a budget greater than at any time during the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Only eight senators – three Republicans and five Democrats. It passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Even in a time of hyper-partisanship, you can always count on Congress to come together and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build weapons and bombs for killing people overseas, even as our infrastructure crumbles at home and thousands of people die each year without healthcare.
TheGuardian.com
The U.S. spends more on the military than the next 10 closest countries combined. [as of March 2020]. Isn’t this overkill? You are telling me that we cannot reduce that amount by a few billion?
Another reason this spending cannot be sustainable: national debt. At the current rate we will go broke in a few years. We will have become a second rate nation dependent on foreigners for our survival:
In addition to a wasteful defense budget we are spending too much on healthcare. With little to show for it. So the next time someone argues that ‘socialized’ healthcare in Europe is too expensive just show them this chart:
At a time when protesters all over America are calling for the defunding of police departments we must demand that government stop spending excessive amounts on the military. Especially since some of those military funds are being using to commit violence citizens exercising their Constitutional rights. And it isn’t just one party both are to blame–equally.
The problem in America is we spend too much on the wrong things. It’s time we demand that the politicians think about spending on programs that benefit our people, not the military-industrial-complex (which includes the police state which perpetrates police abuses on a daily basis) or the pharmaceuticals.
The 99 Percenters 