Koshgarian is program director of the National Priorities Project. They just released their Tax Day 2023 receipt, which found that the average taxpayer paid $1,087 for Pentagon contractors in 2022. The average taxpayer paid $70 for deportations and border control, versus just $19 for refugee assistance.

In her recent piece “A Quarter of Biden’s Budget Will Go to Pentagon Contractors,” Koshgarian notes: “The $1.6 trillion discretionary spending request includes an eye-popping $886 billion for the Pentagon and military. This means that more than half — 52 percent — of the proposed discretionary spending is for the military and war. Almost half of that — or about a quarter of the total discretionary budget — will go to Pentagon contractors.

“This military budget represents a shameful status quo that the country can no longer afford. Families are struggling to afford basics like housing, food, and medicine, and our last pandemic-era protections are ending, all while Pentagon contractors pay their CEOs millions straight from the public treasury.

“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.

“That includes funding for two agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that were flashpoints under the Trump administration. Those agencies are responsible for the millions of deportations that have separated families and devastated immigrant communities, and for militarized border enforcement that has led to unnecessary deaths and abuse of migrants at the southern border.”