The president’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year, released March 9, was heralded by human needs groups for preserving and in some cases expanding critical human needs programs to address poverty, hunger, health care, and protect children and seniors in particular. 

But as our chart shows, the Biden budget continues to fund the Pentagon and war at levels that far outpace all federal programs for housing, education, public health, and more.

The war claimed more than lives and treasure — it claimed a future’s worth of lost opportunities. Now, younger generations are demanding them back.

Current military spending is higher than the height of military spending during the Reagan years at the height of the Cold War. Looking further back, the Biden request is higher than the height of the Vietnam or Korean wars, too. 

While more than half of the federal discretionary budget under the president’s proposal would go to the military, fully two-thirds would go to a combination of the military, veterans’ programs, and heavily militarized homeland security programs. 

What would be possible if we had an extra $100 billion to spend on urgent human needs? 

Can you imagine the audacity to fail a multi-trillion dollar audit of public funds, and then ask for even more of those taxpayer dollars?

It’s time for progressives to add our voices and demand demilitarization so that people in Hawai’i, Guam, Okinawa and elsewhere can live free from the environmental and human degradations imposed by the U.S. military.

This country’s spending on the Pentagon and nuclear weapons is done in the name of “national security.” Not to mention the billions more for “homeland security,” largely in the form of immigration enforcement, deportations, and border militarization.

Meanwhile, thousands of people in Florida and Puerto Rico are without basic security after Hurricane Ian, having lost power, homes and loved ones to the latest in the string of extreme weather events that have grown more frequent and more devastating due to climate change.

Total student loan debt in the United States amounts to $1.7 trillion — that's already how much the Pentagon is set to spend on its most expensive weapon system, the F-35 jet fighter.

If we really want to curb gun violence in this country, our nation’s police budgets are a good place to start.