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military spending
Despite Authoritarian Warnings, 149 House Democrats Vote to Hand Trump $840 Billion for Military
"If an opposition party votes like this, it's not in opposition. It may not even be a party."
Jan 23, 2026
Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been "lawless," "destructive, and "authoritarian" in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill—a vote that progressive critics say exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.
The 341-88 passage of the $828.7 billion fiscal 2026 military spending bill came over the objections of progressives who warned that the bill—now headed to the US Senate for final passage as soon as next week—is a tacit endorsement of the president's policies, even as he has ordered federal agents to terrorize US cities, deployed US soldiers on domestic soil in the face of lawful protests, threatened to annex Greenland and other nations by force, and conducted overseas military operations—including overt acts of war over the last year against both Iran and Venezuela—without congressional notification, authorization, or oversight.
"If an opposition party votes like this, it's not in opposition. It may not even be a party," said Stephen Semler, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Rules Committee who voted naye on the appropriations bill, said ahead of the vote that he looked "at the defense appropriations bill as maybe the last opportunity to prevent this administration from doing something crazy in Greenland or attacking NATO or doing something that we all know is a bad thing to do."
Earlier on Thursday, the Republican-controlled committee blocked an attempt by Democrats to secure a vote on an amendment to the military spending bill that would have explicitly prohibited the invasion of a NATO ally.
Passage of the military spending bill followed an early House vote on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, in which seven Democrats joined Republicans to get it over the line.
While 149 Democrats voted for the $840 military spending bill, 64 Democrats voted against it.
"Republicans want money for unchecked, unaccountable, unconstitutional military action around the world," said Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Il), explaining her vote against the bill. "And over half of the Pentagon budget goes to corporations that profit from pain, war, and genocide."
"You know how they get this done?" Ramirez continued. "By using working families' needs as a bargaining chip, tying the minimum funding working families need to survive to the maximum funding they can give their billionaire friends."
"As long as we are funding imperialism and authoritarianism while working people can't afford the high cost of living," she said, "I will stand opposed."
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Congress Spends Money to Kill and Maim Abroad, But Not to Heal at Home
$30 billion of federal spending for ACA subsidies is a drop in the bucket of a $1 trillion defense budget.
Jan 12, 2026
With Congress overseeing the ending of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, enhanced premium tax credit, or subsidies, for Americans, hiking premiums for them to buy private healthcare insurance, consider such economics and politics in the context of $1 trillion in defense spending. Why? Context matters, economically and politically.
Against this backdrop, ACA subsidies are 3% or three-hundredths, of $1 trillion. To be sure, $30 billion is real money to the average US citizen. But $30 billion of federal spending for ACA subsidies is a drop in the bucket of a $1 trillion defense budget.
This policy priority reflects a political economy that weakens the healthcare of an estimated 22 million Americans facing ACA premium hikes of 114%, on average, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, and strengthens the profitability of military corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics. Such federal spending priorities are a kitchen table issue affecting people who vote blue, red, or independent, or are non-voters.
Here’s the bottom line. Healthcare insurance is a necessity, not a luxury.
Thus, about 10 days of annual defense spending equals the $30 billion of expired Obamacare subsidies. Welcome to politics and economics in capitalist America.
In 2026, with ACA tax credits expiring, Renee Rubin Ross, a mother who lives in California and covers her family of four with Obamacare, is facing a big price hike. How big? Try $2,700 more each month to maintain healthcare coverage. That’s $32,400 more per year for Ross to buy ACA coverage. Where will she and millions of Americans like her find the money to pay their healthcare bills?
The out-of-pocket costs for mom-and-pop shops are also spiking. Shaundell Newsome is the founder of Sumnu Marketing in Las Vegas and co-chair of Small Business for America's Future. “Refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits has abandoned us and added soaring healthcare costs to the economic crisis crushing Main Street this year,” he said in a statement. “We’re beyond disappointed that 5 million small business owners are now almost certain to see their premiums double.”
We return to the $1 trillion annual defense budget. That figure amounts to just over $2.7 billion of spending on defense every day of the year. Thus, about 10 days of annual defense spending equals the $30 billion of expired Obamacare subsidies. Welcome to politics and economics in capitalist America.
The US political economy reflects the money power of the top defense contractors to lobby Congress and the White House for a budget policy that drives increased military spending. There’s a bipartisan consensus, a blue and red marriage. You can’t blame only President Donald J. Trump. Visit opensecrets.org to see the proof of the spending parity in military contractors’ lobbying, a revealing blue and red party breakdown.
For the average US citizen, there is simply no equivalent force of politics and economics in their interests regarding health and warfare spending. Big money sways policy priorities, and the average US citizen is at a distinct disadvantage. That’s not a law of nature, just an indication of a disorganized American working class, politically speaking.
Healthcare spending is a constructive means of improving people’s living conditions. Think of regular check-ups, ranging in age from infants to seniors, who receive care from doctors and nurses. Think of mental health services, a crucial component of health and wellness, for those in need, from traumatized military veterans to sexual assault victims. There are also emergency room visits for accidents and unexpected medical situations such as strokes.
There are coalitions at the state level that do great work to improve funding for healthcare. One example is Health Access California. Its advocacy has in part resulted in lower-cost insulin via CalRX. This means $11 per pen for Californians.
Meanwhile, defense spending is a destructive force that worsens people’s lives at home and abroad. I close with a list, a partial one, of the foreign places where US armaments directly and by proxy lead to the loss of lives and limbs.
Just ask the relatives of Venezuelans maimed and murdered during the US early morning attack and kidnapping of the nation’s elected president and his wife recently. For that matter, ask the family members of the fishermen who lost their lives due to aerial strikes from US forces in the Caribbean over the past few months. Then there are families and friends of those injured and killed by US drone strikes in Somalia. US defense spending has been and remains despite a “ceasefire” a central part of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Meanwhile, there is talk in the US Senate about resuming the expired ACA enhanced tax credits. Shifting federal spending from a $1 trillion defense budget to funding Americans’ healthcare is in all likelihood not a part of this political talk given the corporate-dominant political economy of the country’s military-industrial complex and imperialist foreign policy.
A solution to this destructive situation is movement politics, popular mobilization, and organization of working people in their interests as a class force for peace and social justice, domestically and globally. A few groups that come to mind are CodePink, the Poor People’s Campaign, Public Citizen, and Repairers of the Breach.
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Trump Wants $6 Trillion Tax Hike to Fund $600 Billion in New War Spending
It’s good to see an old man suffering from dementia enjoying himself, but there are much cheaper and less deadly ways to entertain such a person.
Jan 09, 2026
President Donald Trump is now apparently planning to request a $600 billion increase in annual military spending starting in October, financed by another huge jump in import taxes, aka tariffs. I said “apparently” since it’s not clear that he thinks he has to request authority for this spending increase or massive tax hike from Congress.
Under the Constitution there is no ambiguity on these issues. Congress has the power to tax and authorize spending. However, Donald Trump and the Republican Congress have not shown much respect for the Constitution in Trump’s second term and it’s not clear the Supreme Court has any greater level of respect. So, who knows if there actually will be requests for Congress to vote on, or whether he will just do it with no legal authority.
Anyhow, apart from the mechanism employed, this would be a massive increase in spending, coming to just under 2% of GDP. It would also amount to a massive tax increase if Trump actually offsets the spending, as he claimed he would, rather than just increasing the deficit.
Taken over a decade, a $600 billion increase in annual taxes would come to $6 trillion, roughly $45,000 per household. It is real money. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to raise this much money through tariffs.
That doesn’t sound like much of an affordability agenda, but Trump was never really into that word anyhow.
Our imports currently come to just to over $3.2 trillion annually. A straight calculation would imply that an across-the-board tariff increase of 19 percentage points could cover the cost of Trump’s military buildup. But the increase in the tariff rate on most items would end up being considerably higher for two reasons.
First imports would fall sharply in response to a tariff of this size. Let’s say they fall by 15%, this would put imports at $2.7 trillion, which would mean a tariff increase of 22 percentage points would be needed to get to Trump’s $600 billion.
The other reason that the tariff on most items would likely be higher is that Trump will presumably exempt some items other for policy reasons or in response to payoffs at Mar-a-Lago. In the first category, much of what we import are intermediate goods used in manufacturing finished products like cars or planes. High tariffs on these inputs will hurt industries that Trump is ostensibly trying to foster.
The other part of the story is that we have seen many executives make the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, most notably Apple CEO Tim Cook, and walk away tariff exemptions on items they import. This trek will be more widely traveled when CEOs are looking at tariffs two or three times their current levels.
That means the import tax on many products will have to increase in the neighborhood of 30 percentage points to hit Trump’s revenue targets. That will be a big hit to many households’ budgets, as we know that the bulk of tariff revenue gets passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. That doesn’t sound like much of an affordability agenda, but Trump was never really into that word anyhow.
The other side of the story is that this massive increase in military spending will mean a huge diversion of resources from productive uses. Scientists who might have been developing better computers or software for civilian uses will instead be working for military contractors. The same is true for researchers developing new drugs or medical equipment.
This will also be the case with millions of less-highly educated or narrowly trained workers. Instead of working as teachers or in various areas of healthcare, such as physical therapists or home healthcare assistants, they will be employed in the sort of jobs needed by military contractors. That’s a huge drain for the economy and corresponds to the reduction in purchasing power as a result of Trump’s massive tax increase.
If there was some clear argument as to why we needed such a massive increase in taxes and diversion of resources, as when we confronted the Nazis in World War II, perhaps this hit to the economy could be justified. But no one made such claims, not even Trump in his 2024 campaign, until Trump invaded Venezuela and decided it was fun.
It’s good to see an old man suffering from dementia enjoying himself, but it would be much cheaper and less deadly if we just gave him a good video game.
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