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?

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.

Even $100 billion is actually a modest cut when it comes to the Pentagon. We could cut much more and end up even safer. But when that $37 billion or $100 billion can do so much good elsewhere, it's unacceptable to put it in the Pentagon.

Remember Build Back Better? Way back in December, President Biden and advocates across a wide spectrum of issues fought to fund the president's signature plan, which included major new invvestments in clean energy, child care and preschool, health care, and financial help for struggling families. It ultimately failed due to one Senator's claimed...

U.S. and NATO miltiary spending totaling nearly $1.2 trillion - more than 17 times as much as Russia spent - failed to dissuade Putin's aggression toward Ukraine. The U.S. alone spent 12 times as much as Russia. 

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.

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.