One thing is all too obvious: a trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon alone is right around the corner, at the expense of urgently needed action to address climate change, epidemics of disease, economic inequality, and other issues that threaten our lives and safety at least as much as, if not more than, traditional military challenges.
Our elected representatives settled on a final national budget just last week, leaving Pentagon spending at the already generous 2023 level for nearly half of the 2024 fiscal year.
More waste, fraud, and financial abuse are inevitable as the Pentagon prepares to shovel money out the door as quickly as possible.
As long as such a "Cover the globe" strategy persists, the pressure to continue spending ever more on the Pentagon will prove irresistible, no matter how delusional the rationale for doing so may be.
Reining in the Military-Industrial Complex One way to begin reining in runaway Pentagon spending is to eliminate the ability of Congress and the president to arbitrarily increase that department's budget.
The best way to do so would be by doing away with the very concept of "Emergency spending." Otherwise, thanks to such spending, that $895 billion Pentagon budget will undoubtedly prove to be anything but a ceiling on military spending next year.
Ultimately, of course, the debate about Pentagon spending should be focused on far more than the staggering sums being spent.
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