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‘Shameful’: $4,049 of Average US Taxpayer's Bill Last Year Went to War and Weaponry
"Our tax dollars are doing more to bomb children in Iran and other countries than to feed and educate children here."
Apr 09, 2026
A new analysis released Thursday estimates that the average American taxpayer shelled out over $4,000 to the federal government last year "for militarism and its support systems" such as the Pentagon, whose already-massive annual budget is poised to surge to $1.5 trillion if President Donald Trump gets his way.
The National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies found in its latest annual Tax Receipt report that, through their federal taxes, the average US taxpayer contributed $4,049.35 to Pentagon contractors, military personnel, nuclear weapons, aid to foreign militaries, and last year's bombing of Iran's nuclear energy facilities. That's significantly more than the average US taxpayer contributed to healthcare for low-income Americans through Medicaid—$2,492.
NPP's estimated militarism sum for last year does not include costs related to the current, massively unpopular US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28, 2026 and has already cost Americans billions at the pump.
"But if we place the 2026 Iran war costs in the context of our 2025 tax receipt and put the cost at $35 billion—a line the US is likely on the verge of crossing—the average taxpayer will have paid $130 for the war on Iran, eight times more than the $16 the average taxpayer paid for a full year of home heating and energy assistance in 2025," NPP said.
The $1,870 that the average US taxpayer paid toward Pentagon contractors in 2025 was "fifteen times as much as the $124 the average taxpayer paid for school lunches and other nutrition programs," the analysis found.
“It’s shameful that our tax dollars are doing more to bomb children in Iran and other countries than to feed and educate children here," said Lindsay Koshgarian, NPP's program director. "Instead of spending even more of our hard-earned dollars on war and mass deportation, we deserve a massive reinvestment in making this country a place where we can all survive and thrive."
"We’re facing chronic underinvestment in this country, from healthcare to education and more. That money has instead been funding a $1 trillion war machine and a class of Pentagon contractors getting rich off our tax dollars."
NPP noted that Trump's recent request for a $1.5 trillion US military budget for the coming fiscal year would, if approved by Congress, further drive up costs for American taxpayers.
"Our tax receipt shows why so many people in this country are struggling," said Koshgarian. "We’re facing chronic underinvestment in this country, from healthcare to education and more. That money has instead been funding a $1 trillion war machine and a class of Pentagon contractors getting rich off our tax dollars. The good news is that if we reverse our backwards priorities, we can start to make Americans’ lives better."
MarketWatch reported earlier this week that Americans are "increasingly saying they won't pay their taxes this year as a political protest," citing the illegal war on Iran and Trump's unleashing of federal immigration agents and National Guard troops on US cities.
Activist and attorney Rachel Cohen wrote in Current Affairs magazine last month that she is not paying her federal income taxes this year, noting that "our enormous military budget is going to illegal wars of aggression in multiple hemispheres."
"When I learned about pacifists who participated in draft refusal during the Vietnam War," Cohen wrote, "I was confident they were doing the right thing, and that if I were similarly situated, I would have joined them."
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$1 Billion Daily Cost of Trump's Iran War Could Fund Food Aid, Healthcare for Tens of Millions
"Medicare for All, or endless foreign wars?" asked Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner. "Anyone in the House or Senate giving the wrong answer should lose their seat."
Mar 06, 2026
The daily price tag of US President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran would be enough to cover the daily costs of federal nutrition assistance for more than 40 million Americans, as well as daily Medicaid costs for the roughly 16 million people expected to lose health coverage due to the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last year.
That's according to an analysis published Thursday by the National Priorities Project (NPP), which noted that—on an annual basis—the estimated $1 billion-per-day cost of the US war on Iran is "higher than the appropriated budget of any federal agency except the Pentagon itself."
"That money could cover the things we need here at home," wrote NPP's Alliyah Lusuegro and Lindsay Koshgarian. "The tradeoff is clear: the Trump administration—backed by several members of Congress—is cutting healthcare and food assistance for millions of families while spending $1 billion a day on this emerging war."
"The question isn’t whether the money exists—it's what we choose to spend it on," they wrote.
In a social media post on Friday, Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner—a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—posed what he characterized as a "simple question" to members of Congress: "Medicare for All, or endless foreign wars?"
"Anyone in the House or Senate giving the wrong answer," Platner added, "should lose their seat."
"The cost of the war in Iraq ended up being almost $3 trillion. This could be astronomical, easily.”
The Pentagon's early estimate of the Iran war's cost was first reported by Atlantic journalist Nancy Youssef, who cited an unnamed congressional official.
In a separate analysis released earlier this week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the cost of the first 100 hours of the Iran war at $3.7 billion, or $891.4 million per day. The Pentagon is reportedly planning to ask Congress to approve at least $50 billion in supplemental funding for the war, a historically unpopular assault that lawmakers did not authorize.
“Without support from the American people, Donald Trump led the country into a reckless war with Iran that has taken the lives of six service members and injured several others," said Kendall Witmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee. "Now, the White House is scrambling to come up with a plan as the cost of Trump’s war skyrockets. Working families are already struggling with soaring prices and a hollowed-out job market—they can't afford Trump’s war of choice."
On Thursday, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) asked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to conduct a thorough analysis of the financial costs of the Iran war, including scenarios in which the assault drags on for more than five weeks and the US launches a ground invasion.
“Taxpayers deserve a nonpartisan estimate of the financial and economic impact of President Trump’s reckless war in Iran that has already led to the tragic deaths of American servicemembers," said Boyle. "American families don’t want billions of dollars wasted on an unnecessary war—they want lower costs and affordable healthcare.”
Koshgarian of NPP told CNN that the costs of war are "highly unpredictable, and so we won’t know the cost of it until it’s over."
"The cost of the war in Iraq ended up being almost $3 trillion,” Koshgarian said. “This could be astronomical, easily.”
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Trump's DC Occupation Costs 4 Times More Than It Would Take to House City's Entire Homeless Population
"This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes," said researcher Hanna Homestead.
Aug 22, 2025
Last week, when Trump federalized Washington, DC's police force and deployed the National Guard to occupy its streets, one of his main orders was to "end vagrancy" by destroying homeless encampments and arresting and forcibly relocating the people taking shelter there.
But according to an investigation published on Wednesday by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, in collaboration with The Intercept, deploying the National Guard and "getting rid of the slums" is costing far more than it would cost to simply provide housing to every homeless person in the city.
Governors from six US states have sent troops to Washington to help Trump's effort, swelling the ranks to nearly 2,100 who will soon be on patrol.
According to previous reporting, National Guard deployments cost the US government $530 per guard member each day. Using that figure, Homestead estimated that it would cost just over $1.1 million.
She added that "the number of troops will likely continue to grow. And with no deadline for the DC deployment, those costs could add up for months or even years."
According to the most recent data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are about 5,600 people experiencing either sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in DC on a given night. Operating an affordable housing unit for each one of them, the data shows, costs about $45.44 per person, per day, on average in DC.
Providing affordable housing to every homeless person in DC would cost an estimated $255,166, which is 4.3 times less than the cost of Trump's military deployment.
"Taxpayers like you and me bear the cost of this cruel power grab," Homestead said. "This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes."
Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that over 70 encampments had been cleared since Trump's order to federalize the police. She also said that over 600 people had been arrested, though it was not specified how many of them were homeless.
Trump has sought to conflate homelessness with criminality, suggesting that the nation's capital had been "overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people."
While his solution has been a show of military force against people with nowhere to go, a large body of research suggests that the approach of providing "Housing First"—meaning a stable place to stay with no preconditions for sobriety or treatment—reduces crime.
A 2021 study from UCLA found that providing homeless people with targeted housing assistance reduced the probability of committing a crime by 80%.
"Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money, and simply does not work," said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center. "The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails."
But in addition to a crackdown on the homeless, the Trump administration is also pushing to eliminate funds for public housing. The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 slashes funding for HUD's Continuum of Care program, which provided cities with funding for initiatives to house the homeless.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the proposal would effectively end funding of permanent supportive housing for 170,000 residents and potentially increase the number of homeless people in the US by 36%.
"Arresting people for no reason other than the fact that they have no home is inhumane and unjust," said Amber W. Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "It is particularly cruel to do so knowing that federal and local housing programs have been slashed and that DC does not have enough shelter beds."
"Fines, arrests, and encampment evictions make homelessness worse, further traumatize our homeless neighbors while disconnecting them from community and support," said Dana White, Director of Advocacy at Miriam's Kitchen, a DC-based homeless services organization. "If policing resolved homelessness, we wouldn't have homelessness here in DC or anywhere else in this country."
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To Defeat Trump's Fascism, We Must Confront Militarism
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Jun 12, 2025
President Trump’s deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quash peaceful demonstrations against brutal ICE raids is a wake up call. Now is the time to push back against this administration’s use of military violence against its own citizens to consolidate authoritarian power. As Trump threatens to arrest California Governor Newsom and unleash “troops everywhere,” the people of this country must reject militarization as a tool of authoritarianism and stand firm to defend and expand democracy.
As tanks and troops descend upon Los Angeles to silence dissent, on Saturday, they will roll through Washington in a display of power, revealing the undercurrents of an administration that wields militarization not for defense, but for domination.
On his 79th birthday, President Trump will finally get his “big, beautiful” military parade, brandishing unrivaled U.S. military might on the streets of the nation’s capital. Marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, the $45 million parade will feature nearly 7,000 soldiers marching down Constitution Avenue, flanked by hundreds of B-17 bombers, Strykers and Apache helicopters. Washington will look like Nazi Germany, and unless we tackle militarism in our fight to defend democracy, we, too, may soon live under authoritarian rule.
As longtime peace activists, we have opposed U.S. wars against Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and raised the alarm over militarized U.S. foreign policies like war drills against China and North Korea which provoke a dangerous counter-reaction and fuels an arms race that could trigger nuclear war.
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists.
Deluged daily with domestic crises, it is challenging to draw attention to the dangers of U.S. militarism, especially when most view it as a problem “over there.”
But now we are in an era where masked ICE agents are raiding schools, workplaces, churches and homes, tearing apart families by abducting and deporting legal residents and rounding up students for protesting U.S. support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
The U.S. public can no longer afford to ignore the lethal consequences of militarism on our democracy at a time when our Commander-in-Chief has pardoned January 6th vigilantes, defied the Constitution and judicial rulings, threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, and has already deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines in an attempt to quash dissent at home.
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises to end U.S. involvement in Ukraine and Gaza, he is calling for an unprecedented $1.1 trillion Pentagon budget for more war and militarism, including modernizing nuclear weapons, further entrenching the U.S.’ permanent war footing across the Pacific and Asia in preparation for war with China, and massively increasing policing, detention and deportation.
In 2026 alone, Trump and Republicans want to spend an additional $43.8 billion on mass detentions and deportations, funding more ICE raids like those in LA. This militarized budget accounts for 75 percent of the entire discretionary budget, which explains why on top of massive tax cuts for billionaires, there is no money for social programs and federal agencies that actually help our communities feel safe – clean air and water, healthcare, child nutrition, education, and housing assistance.
U.S. taxpayers are told this historic increase in more militarism is a “generational investment” in defending our country, or that it’s to honor the sacrifices of U.S. service women and men.
But the truth is that half of the Pentagon budget goes to defense contractors that sell weapons of mass destruction to authoritarian states and human rights abusers, like Saudi Arabia and Israel. Instead of financing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza with $17.9 billion in 2024, U.S. taxpayer dollars could have provided more than one million U.S. veterans with VA healthcare.
Our taxpayer dollars also enrich tech billionaires like Elon Musk, whose $277 million dollar donation to Trump’s campaign landed him a $5.2 billion dollar Pentagon deal in April, and a free pass to wage an administrative coup. Billions of our taxpayer dollars also go to venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir, which Bloomberg describes as an “intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror [that] was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home.” Thiel, who doesn’t “believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” just received another contract to carry out ICE deportations, and is, along with Musk, Meta’s Zuckerberg and other techno-fascists, seeking to build a dystopian future of unregulated “network states” and surveil us all.
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power...
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists. In the report Trading Life for Death, the National Priorities Project and Public Citizen found that militarized spending increases in the reconciliation proposals total $163 billion for FY 2026. That's more than enough to fund Medicaid for the 13.7 million people at risk of losing health care, and the 11 million people at risk of losing food stamps.
As Trump uses the parade as a spectacle to exalt his unchecked power, people around the country will join over 1,800 organized protests under the banners of “No Kings Day” and “Kick Out the Clowns.” This day of action offers an opportunity to shine a light on the threat of a highly militarized society to our democracy, from the bloated Pentagon budget that leaches funding from investments that make us secure, to state capture by techno-fascists on our taxpayer dime. We need to do the hard work to redefine our paradigm of national security. The Feminist Peace Playbook: A Guide for Transforming U.S. Foreign Policy provides one such guide for moving our country from one defined by war and violence to one built on care, compassion and cooperation.
Let’s heed the prescient words of President Eisenhower, a five-star general who led the Allied Forces in WWII to defeat fascism, when he warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power at home.
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Pentagon and Immigration Spending in GOP Bill Could Instead Protect Medicaid Coverage
"Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress," said one advocate and author of a new report.
May 23, 2025
With the House GOP's Medicaid-slashing reconciliation bill now headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, a trio of groups on Thursday highlighted that the tens of billions the reconciliation legislation allocates for the Pentagon and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown efforts could instead be used to protect and expand health insurance access for millions.
House Republicans' reconciliation bill includes $163 billion for the Pentagon and for mass deportation and border-related expenses that U.S. President Donald Trump has requested be allocated in fiscal year 2026. Those dollars could instead go toward providing 31 million adults with Medicaid, or providing 71 million people with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, according to a report titled Trading Life for Death: What the Reconciliation Bill Puts at Stake in Your State.
The report is a joint publication from the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, the progressive policy research organization the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and the National Priorities Project (NPP), which is a federal budget research organization and a project of IPS.
In a statement on Thursday, Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at NPP and one of the authors of the report, framed the reconciliation package as a "direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization."
The reconciliation bill, which passed 215-214 in the House of Representatives on Thursday, includes tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy that would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt, a roll back in clean energy tax credits, sweeping cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to the tune of nearly $1 trillion, and an increase in the maximum payment available through the child tax credit until 2028—though the bill is designed so that it would block an estimated 4.5 million children from accessing the credit, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Under the legislation, an estimated 8.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to a May 11 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million people would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance under the changes to SNAP.
Millions more could lose their healthcare due to Obamacare decisions/provisions.
Per the report, the militarized spending increases for 2026 would more than enough to fund Medicaid for the millions who are at risk of losing their health insurance under the bill, and the millions at risk of losing their SNAP benefits.
In addition to highlighting that the bill includes a huge cash injection for the U.S. Department of Defense, the report argues the Pentagon does not need more money. "The United States is already the world's largest military spender, allocating more taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon than the next nine countries combined," according to the report, which also notes that the department has never passed an audit.
The three groups also quantify the tradeoffs between defense spending and healthcare at a more granular level.
For example, the bill includes a $25 billion initial investment in Trump's "Golden Dome" project, a multilayered defense system that Trump has said will be capable of "intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space," according to CBS News.
In just one congressional district, Tennessee's 2nd District, taxpayer funds going toward the investment in the Golden Dome could instead be used to put 12,310 people on Medicaid, according to the report. In Texas' 21st District, taxpayers' funds redirected to support the Golden Dome could provide Medicaid to 13,589 people.
"If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors," said Savannah Wooten, People Over Pentagon advocate at Public Citizen and report co-author, in a statement on Thursday. "Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress."
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Average US Taxpayer Contributed More to Militarism Than Medicare in 2023: Report
"This year $5,109 of the average American's taxpayer dollars went to fund the military and its support systems," said the co-author of a new analysis.
Apr 09, 2024
The average U.S. taxpayer was forced to contribute more to militarized programs than to Medicare and Medicaid combined in 2023, according to a new analysis released Tuesday by the National Priorities Project.
Published ahead of Tax Day, the analysis sheds light on the extent to which the federal income tax dollars of ordinary Americans are fueling "militarism and its support systems" such as the Pentagon, which currently accounts for roughly half of the federal government's total discretionary budget.
"Overall, in 2023, the average taxpayer contributed $5,109 for militarism and its support systems—including war and the Pentagon, veterans' programs, deportations and border militarization, and federal spending on policing and prisons," according to NPP, which is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.
By comparison, the typical U.S. taxpayer contributed $4,308 to Medicare and Medicaid, $346 to K-12 education, $516 to nutrition assistance for low-income Americans, and $58 to diplomacy-related programs.
"Right now, millions of Americans are struggling to stay afloat—it's become so expensive to live, eat, and have a home. Yet, instead of addressing the cost-of-living crisis or funding measures to address our communities' needs, this year $5,109 of the average American's taxpayer dollars went to fund the military and its support systems," said Alliyah Lusuegro, NPP's outreach coordinator and a co-author of the new analysis.
"A far greater portion of our tax dollars goes toward militarism at home and abroad, and toward harming and separating immigrant families, when we should be investing instead in safe and healthy conditions for our communities and our futures," Lusuegro added.
Last year, according to NPP, $1,748 of the average American's income tax contributions went to the pockets of Pentagon contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which lobby Congress aggressively for an ever-larger military budget—much of which ends up in private hands.
Lindsay Koshgarian, NPP's program director, said Tuesday that "it's outrageous that the average taxpayer is giving the equivalent of a month's rent to Pentagon contractors."
"These big corporations are already not paying their fair share in taxes," said Koshgarian. "Instead, ordinary people are subsidizing those corporations' profits and multi-million dollar CEO pay packages. Taxpayer dollars should be going to real needs like schools, food and housing programs, or renewable energy—not lining the pockets of corporations."
The analysis comes weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law an $825 billion military spending package for fiscal year 2024 that includes "includes $33.5 billion to build eight ships and allocates funds for 86 F-35 and 24 F-15EX fighter jets as well as 15 KC-46A tankers," Defense News reported.
Last month, Biden released a budget proposal that called for $850 billion for the Pentagon and more than $1 trillion overall in militarized funding.
"Just like our personal expenses, our income tax payments can change our lives for the better—or not," NPP said Tuesday. "If we put more funds into education, we'll probably see kids and families better off. If we put more into Pentagon contracts, we'll see their CEOs and shareholders better off—and we'll see U.S. weapons used in conflicts around the world."
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Biden Budget Includes Over $1 Trillion in 'Militarized Spending': Analysis
"If we are ever going to stop the cycle of endless war, we'll have to invest differently."
Mar 12, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden's new budget proposal calls for more than $1 trillion in military-related spending for the coming fiscal year, according to an analysis released Monday by the National Priorities Project.
That's more than twice as much as the president's proposed discretionary spending on domestic programs related to public health, housing, education, and environmental protection.
The $1.1 trillion in "militarized spending" includes $850 billion for the Pentagon, an agency that recently failed its sixth consecutive audit and can't account for a majority of its roughly $4 trillion in assets. The $850 billion topline is a $9 billion increase over the Pentagon budget that Congress is expected to approve for the current fiscal year.
The president's 2025 request also includes $34 billion in Department of Energy funding for the nation's nuclear stockpile, at least $11.6 billion in international military aid, more than $60 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, and $113 billion for veterans' programs.
"That's not all the militarism in the budget," noted Lindsay Koshgarian, program director of the National Priorities Project. "In reality, the spending on militarization in this budget is even higher. These figures, which come from the administration, treat the militarization of domestic law enforcement—things like the domestic work of the FBI, federal marshalls, and grants to local law enforcement agencies—as domestic expenses. NPP reports from previous years have found that those expenses added tens of billions more in militarized spending."
The $1.1 trillion also excludes money "for the Pentagon's operations in support of various wars," Koshgarian observed.
"That's highly unrealistic given current administration policies," she wrote. "The administration hasn't been making visible efforts to end the war in Ukraine, nor has it responded to demands that it withhold military aid to Israel in light of war crimes the Israeli government continues to perpetrate there. Without—at the very least—some efforts along those lines, it's not reasonable to assume these extra expenses will just drop to zero next year."
"War hawks squealing that a 1% increase to defense spending is 'meager' or 'catastrophic' lack perspective altogether."
Biden's budget request would push U.S. military spending to record levels, but Republican lawmakers immediately criticized the proposal as inadequate—a signal that they are likely to attempt to pile even more money into the Pentagon's bloated coffers, as they do almost every year.
"War hawks squealing that a 1% increase to defense spending is 'meager' or 'catastrophic' lack perspective altogether," Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday. "The true catastrophe is the existing scale of U.S. military spending. The Pentagon is a three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar agency that has never once passed an audit. It's infamous for waste, fraud, and bankrolling defense corporations. Roughly half of the total Department of Defense budget goes to contractors each year."
"Reallocating billions away from the Pentagon and into direct human needs instead," Gilbert added, "would benefit everyday Americans far more."
The White House drew praise from progressive advocacy groups for proposing a revival of the expanded child tax credit that slashed youth poverty in 2021, among other domestic investments. The program expired at the end of 2021 due to opposition from congressional Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), causing child poverty to surge.
Groups also contrasted Biden's proposal with the fiscal year 2025 resolution passed last week by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee, which calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, education, infrastructure spending, and more while backing a "fiscal commission" for Social Security and Medicare.
But Koshgarian wrote Monday that Biden's request would still not provide the "security we need, in terms of costs of living, quality of life, climate change, or securing peace." She noted that the White House proposal would boost the Pentagon budget by "more than 10 times that of the Department of Education" and "330 times that of the State Department."
"If we are ever going to stop the cycle of endless war," she argued, "we'll have to invest differently."
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US Urged to Not Give Israel Any More Weapons for War Crimes in Gaza
"The U.S. should use diplomatic channels to work for an immediate cease-fire," said the National Priorities Project, discouraging "more weapons and military aid that would further inflame an unjust and illegal response."
Oct 20, 2023
With more than 4,100 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis already dead as Israel bombards the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a surprise attack led by Hamas, progressive groups on Friday pushed back against U.S. President Joe Biden's effort to further arm Israel.
"In the face of massive suffering in Gaza and disregard for international law by the Israeli government, the U.S. must not provide additional military aid or weapons that would cause more deaths," the National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies said, demanding that U.S. use its diplomatic power to push for a cease-fire.
"The Israeli military's onslaught on Gaza has not protected civilians. It has instead targeted them," NPP asserted, pointing out that while cutting off Palestinians in the Hamas-governed territory from essentials like food, water, medicine, and electricity, Israel has bombed residential, religious, medical, and educational buildings over the past two weeks.
Already, the United States provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid. After visiting Tel Aviv earlier this week, Biden confirmed in a Thursday night speech that on Friday he would "send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America's national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine."
The administration's $106 billion supplemental funding request includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine—which is battling a Russian invasion—$14.3 billion for Israel, and $9.15 billion for humanitarian aid to both countries plus Gaza. It also seeks $13.6 billion for the U.S. southern border and $4 billion to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
"The billions of dollars that have been proposed for Israeli military aid are needed elsewhere," argued NPP. "Whether for international humanitarian aid or underfunded programs for U.S. residents, our resources should be supporting life, peace, and justice, not war and vengeance."
"The suffering of Israeli civilians in the attacks of October 7 does not justify collective punishment of Palestinian civilians," NPP stressed. "The U.S. must not support these violations of international law or of U.S. law, which prohibits funding foreign military forces engaged in human rights abuses. Instead, the U.S. should use diplomatic channels to work for an immediate cease-fire to protect civilians. It should not provide more weapons and military aid that would further inflame an unjust and illegal response."
Legal experts with the U.S-based Center for Constitutional Rights warned Biden this week that "the United States is not only failing to uphold its obligation to prevent the commission of genocide, but there is a plausible and credible case to be made that the United States' actions to further the Israeli military operation, closure, and campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza rise to the level of complicity in the crime under international law."
As a potential Israeli ground invasion of Gaza loomed, Amnesty International on Friday shared what it described as "damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families" in the besieged territory, while also calling on Palestinian militants including Hamas to release their estimated 200 hostages.
Throughout this week, progressives U.S. lawmakers and congressional staffers have joined people across the United States and beyond—including many Jewish individuals and groups—in calling for a cease-fire. Polling results released Friday by Data for Progress show that 66% of likely voters agree that "the U.S. should call for a cease-fire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza" and "leverage its close diplomatic relationship with Israel to prevent further violence and civilian deaths."
In response to the president's Thursday night speech, Working Families Party federal affairs director Natalia Salgado declared Friday that "the role of the United States should be to use diplomacy to work toward peace, not fanning the flames of violence," which "means pushing for an immediate cease-fire and working to free the hostages."
Citing the "growing number of Jews, Muslims, and people of all faiths standing together against further bloodshed," including U.S. lawmakers who have called for a cease-fire, Salgado said: "We encourage more to speak up. And we call on members of Congress to oppose unconditional military aid."
"There is no military solution to this conflict, and there never has been," she added. "Stop the fighting. Release the hostages. End the siege and the occupation."
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Dwight Was Right: Congress Must Say No to Military Contractors
The world Eisenhower warned about has materialized. We need more members of Congress to stand up to the arms industry and fight for social investments instead.
Jul 12, 2023
Last month, a lone member of Congress took a stand against a powerful industry that shamelessly extracts billions of tax dollars from the U.S. government.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was the sole member of the House Armed Services Committee to vote against a Pentagon budget championed by arms contractors who, in Khanna’s words, "are ripping off American taxpayers at every turn by raising prices to unprecedented levels.”
But Khanna isn’t the only member of Congress concerned about the massive waste of taxpayer dollars that the Pentagon budget represents.
We need more members of Congress to stand up to the arms industry and its profit-seeking at the expense of those in need.
As the full House of Representatives prepares to take on the military spending and policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), other members are also sounding the alarm. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) have introduced an amendment to the bill that would cut the Pentagon budget by $100 billion and put that money toward other needs.
The amendment specifies that none of those cuts would come from military pay or benefits for troops and their families. Instead they would target military contractors, who can spare it. More than half of the Pentagon budget—$414 billion out of $776 billion in fiscal year 2022—went to these for-profit corporations.
Those contractors have been found repeatedly price gouging the government. In just one instance, contractors charged the Pentagon more than $10,000 for a part that NASA had previously bought for $328. Limits on Pentagon spending would force the Pentagon to work harder to avoid these abuses.
The Pentagon itself needs more accountability, too. The agency—which receives over half of the discretionary budget that Congress allocates each year—is the only major government agency that’s never passed an audit. In its last attempt, the Pentagon was able to account for less than half of its equipment and assets.
In short, the largest government agency has no idea where your taxpayer dollars are going.
Limits on the Pentagon budget are a win-win: they would introduce some badly needed accountability while freeing up resources for other needs.
Those needs are pressing: across the country, people are experiencing a summer of triple-digit heat, tornadoes, wildfire smoke, and other extreme weather as a result of climate change. Scientists warned that this month, the Earth experienced its hottest days in 100,000 years.
Additional funding reclaimed from the Pentagon budget could subsidize disaster relief and cooling help for people affected by extreme weather. It could speed the transition away from fossil fuels, so that we stop digging ourselves deeper into the climate change disaster.
There’s so much more that money could do to fix real problems. The budget deal struck by Congress earlier this year threatens cuts to everything from Head Start to public schools, public health, and more.
In effect, our current budget priorities reward price-gouging Pentagon contractors while punishing poor families and communities.
Decades ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower used his final address as president to warn his fellow citizens about the dangers of “unwarranted influence” by the arms industry. It was a theme of his presidency: in an early speech, he reminded us that every dollar spent on weapons was “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.”
Today, the world Eisenhower warned about has materialized. The arms industry has too many members of Congress in its pockets. Now we need more members of Congress to stand up to the arms industry and its profit-seeking at the expense of those in need. A vote to cut the Pentagon budget does just that.
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Lockheed Martin CEO Hails Pentagon Budget Boost in Debt Limit Deal
The head of the major U.S. military contractor said the Pentagon top-line in the debt ceiling deal is "as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for at this point."
Jun 02, 2023
The head of the top weapons contractor in the United States said Thursday that he's happy with the debt ceiling agreement negotiated by the congressional Republicans and the Biden White House, a deal that proposes a military budget increase while imposing two years of caps on other discretionary federal spending—impacting funding for education, housing, and more.
James Taiclet, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, said at a conference that the bill now awaiting President Joe Biden's signature is "as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for at this point," noting that it calls for "3% growth for two years in defense where other areas of the budget are being reduced."
"I think we're in a real strong position at this point," said Taiclet, adding that "there's sufficient funding in the president's budget."
Biden's $886 billion military spending request for fiscal year 2024—a $28 billion increase over current levels—is the topline military budget number set by the debt ceiling legislation, though war hawks in both parties are already exploring ways to dump even more money into the Pentagon's overflowing coffers.
If finalized in the appropriations process, military outlays will account for close to 56% of the U.S. federal government's total discretionary spending in fiscal year 2024, Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project noted Thursday.
"This represents a massive shift of resources away from domestic programs and toward the military: the already-gargantuan military budget will increase by $28 billion (3.3%), while domestic spending will take a cut of $63 billion (8.2%)," Koshgarian wrote. "Cuts to many domestic programs will need to go deeper, because domestic spending includes veterans' programs, which are protected from cuts in the current deal."
"The only reason there’s a budget deal at all right now is because House Republicans threatened to tank the economy by refusing to allow the U.S. to pay its bills unless they got cuts for programs they don't like," she added. "They succeeded, and as others have shown, the people to pay the price will be the poorest and most down on their luck. Worse, the current deal could set a new precedent for more of the same: unnecessary military increases while domestic programs are slashed."
Lockheed Martin, one of the contractors that has been price-gouging the Department of Defense for years, is poised to be one of the top beneficiaries of the larger Pentagon budget—much of which will likely wind up benefiting private companies.
As Responsible Statecraft's Eli Clifton reported Thursday, Lockheed "received 73 percent of its net sales from the U.S. government in 2022 and invested $13 million in lobbying the federal government."
"Their lobbyists heavily focus their efforts on the defense budget," Clifton added, citing OpenSecrets.
William Hartung, senior research fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Friday that the newly passed debt limit deal "unnecessarily privileges the Pentagon over other essential programs."
"There's no reason to exclude the Pentagon from the budget freeze," he added. "Congress should push the current proposed military spending total of $886 billion back to FY2023 levels in the appropriations process that will play out over the course of this year."
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