Sanders Explains Why He’s Voting Against the New $850 Billion Pentagon Budget |
“We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry,” Sen. Bernie Sanders writes in a new op-ed.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-pentagon-budget
24 comments
Agreed.
Massive bottom up investment in children, health care, and the elderly is the way to save the country and the democratic party.
Long term it will be extremely profitable. Short-term, not so much. So, we won’t. Gotta think about those quarterly numbers. Line must go up.
Before we start shoveling exponentially more money at them, can we all discuss [the Congressional report released last week stating that top DoD & Pentagon officials “intentionally delayed the deployment of D.C. National Guard to the Capital on 6 January 2021.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyCSJi20N8c)
as per [Chaiman Loudermilk:](https://cha.house.gov/2024/11/dod-inspector-general-concealed-january-6-evidence)
*“My Subcommittee released transcripts that show that not only were political concerns of ‘optics’ at play, but that DoD officials continued to delay as the riot at the Capitol worsened. The evidence is conclusive: DoD officials misled Congress into believing that help was ‘on the way’ with full knowledge that it wasn’t…My Subcommittee worked with the DoD IG in good faith throughout our investigation to provide multiple opportunities for the DOD IG to produce corroborating materials or evidence to support their conclusions..Unfortunately, the DoD IG continues to promote an inaccurate narrative that protects senior Pentagon officials and attempts to cast fault on the D.C. National Guard, who were ready and waiting less than 2 miles from the Capitol but unable to respond on January 6 due to lack of communication from the Secretary of the Army.”*
America has just proven it doesn’t deserve Bernie Sanders.
If Democratic politicians actually wanted to win, they’d agree, loudly and proudly. And back it up with their votes.
I like sanders for the most part, but I hate this argument. It’s disingenuous and he knows better. Our military spending greatly benefits the country economically. Tons of jobs are dependent on it directly and indirectly it gives of huge amounts of leverage in trade.
Man, we must be at war on like 6 different fronts to justify that budget. Did I miss us invading some countries or defending Great Britain or France or Australia again?
Is there a way to out this in the DOGE suggestion box.
This was the candidate we needed in 2016.
The NATO commitment is 2% of GDP on defense spending. The pentagon budget is roughly in line with that commitment.
I support our NATO and simultaneously think we ought to substantially decrease overall military spending.
Is the NATO commitment for readiness too demanding? I’ve struggled to reconcile this.
Trying to cut the defense budget is a red flag for Russian influence. I’m highly suspicious of those who want to cut the US military budget, especially at a time like this when our allies are under attack by Russia or its allies and need help.
We don’t have to cut the defense budget to get the other things Sanders wants, like help for the poor. We could increase taxes on the rich.
Somebody has to be the world’s most powerful military. I would prefer that it would be ***US***, as opposed to another country not so keen on democracy.
Has he advocated at all for relaxing zoning regulation in Vermont? Or is he totally in favor of Turning the whole state into some 1890s agrarian tourist attraction
Civil Unrest is why the GOP will need to spend even more on the military since it’s their plan to have them fight the citizens.
It’d be more productive if Sanders used the gusto to support the defense budget to achieve what he wants.
There’s a reality here, that the military budget is the easiest thing to get through congress. There’s a second reality that the US military in reality is a giant socialized jobs, training and S&T investment program that’s easily passable because it’s the easiest thing to get appropriations for.
~$850B in pentagon budget buys you:
– Skills, discipline, fitness, ethics training for 1.3m people who can literally enroll from any background and experience opportunities they would never otherwise have.
– Roughly ~700k+ people enrolling in college fully paid via GI bill
– 10m fairly good paying contracting jobs
– A couple hundred billion dollars in funding in science/tech that would otherwise never see the light of day because it’s too speculative for anything other than being justifiable as a “possible threat in the future”.
It’s kind of important to remember here that a lot of the origins of things that are the most important drivers of our economy and society are actually things that had their funding originating in the military at a time when they would otherwise NEVER have been funded.
e.g.: Internet, GPS, Computers, VR, penicillin, lots of incredible materials science/energy etc. stuff.
The zeal for defense spending exists. Instead of arbitrarily fighting against it, definitely look to put checks and balances in, but use it to your advantage.
Make some program up like: “The defense food-shortage preparation act” that forces the military to innovate and stockpile 90 day supply of healthier MRE options in case of combat, put a maximum time-limit on MRE storage – say 90 days, and note that all MRE’s should be donated to food banks after 90 days… Boom, no more 4000mg sodium MRE’s that have been sitting forever, a “crisis” supply maintained in case the worst should happen, and foodbanks get a continuous supply of healthy meals to dole out….
There’s ways to play the game.
We can keep the military budget if we actually treat climate change as a national security threat and use the defense budget to address it
Well all that went down the toilet when the people of this country voted for an oligarchy, didn’t it folks?
It’ll be interesting to see how Trump officially rationalised increases in military spending when he is in charge. I assume he could piggy back off the military stuff given to Ukraine, and those that don’t understand … will believe every word.
According to Forbes, if you took all the wealth of America’s billionaires and put it together, you’d have enough money to give each homeless person a million dollars and you’d still have enough left over for the billionaires to keep being billionaires.
Didn’t they fail their audit again recently? There’s missing $ that they have yet to account for.
The wild thing is it wouldn’t even take that much to make a major impact. Expanding the child tax credit from $2000 to $3600 during COVID reduced childhood poverty by almost half. So, of course, the GOP refused to extend this hugely effective policy.
Just a heads up…
the interest payments for the U.S. will outpace military spending in just a few years.
You all might wanna get on top of that.
It sure looks like the American people want universal healthcare also. Perhaps the DNC will allow someone to run on this premise.
Good to see Sanders stick to his principles, unlike the rest of the Dems who would rather send endless billions to Ukraine and escalate conflicts.
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