Pentagon budget boosters are using the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an excuse for higher military spending, on top of an already record high military budget.

The budget deal announced today continues a longstanding trend of overfunding the military and underfunding domestic and human needs, providing $782 billion for the miltiary and only $730 billion for domestic priorities. 

President Biden called for major new investments in people, communities, and infrastructure in his State of the Union address. But his calls fly in the face of the real spending patterns in this country, where military spending is routinely larger than spending on early childhood education, public K-12 education, job training, housing, public health, and medical and scientific research combined.

It’s unconscionable to pour more money into the Pentagon while the country comes apart at the seams. There’s still time for the Biden administration to pull back and stop the endless spending, just as it made a major step toward ending our endless wars.

Guard members have stepped up heroically during the pandemic. If we invested in more than just the military, maybe they wouldn’t have to.

The House passed a sweeping bill to counter China economically, the America COMPETES Act, with $52 billion for fund the production of computer chips. What else could that pay for?

As usual, there are no military solutions, and a heap of other dire problems are being relegated to lower priority status in the meantime. It’s time for the U.S. to evolve - to look for diplomatic solutions, and start to address all of the world’s problems.

While climate change fuels migration, the United States hardens its southern border instead of investing in real sources of safety for people in this country and around the world. 

Over 50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., said of the United States in his crucial “Beyond Vietnam” speech that: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” If we take King’s words seriously...