The US should cut the Pentagon budget to fund social | Emma Claire Foley

The Pentagon has come to expect reliable, generous financial support that keeps them prosperous. Doesn't the American public deserve the same?

After months of negotiations, Congress is struggling to come up with a plan to fund the Build Back Better Act. Rather than forcing more cuts that would further limit the bill's transformative potential, throughout the process legislators have been considering funding sources that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable. With progressive congressional power at a relative high and the experience of Covid-19 not quite behind us, it's a perfect moment to look to the defense budget as a way to fund the recovery effort the US sorely needs.

The Pentagon budget is the one area where massive, long-term government spending is not only considered totally normal, but suggestions to change the status quo are still mostly balked at. Negotiations over the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act are also ongoing, and the contrast between the range of alternatives being seriously considered is striking. Topline numbers are higher even than the president's budget request, which itself is $13bn more than the final Trump military budget request, and it preserves the Trump administration's nuclear weapons programs that the Democrats ran on cancelling only a few short months ago.

Emma Claire Foley is Global Zero Research Associate