Budget deal encourages more Pentagon waste
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
WASHINGTON — Win Without War Director Stephen Miles released the following statement regarding the recently announced budget deal:
Today’s budget deal means that once again, the Pentagon and defense industry CEOs — whose pockets are already deep and overflowing with cash — are about to get another giant spending spree, funded by American taxpayers.
It’s outrageous that our leaders would agree to give the Pentagon an additional $168 billion over the next two years when it doesn’t even have a full accounting of its already massive budget. In just one example of many, a recent study found that top Pentagon officials deliberately buried a report showing how it could save $125 billion. Since the Pentagon can’t even keep track of the money it has, how can Americans trust when it says it can’t possibly function without hundreds of billions more of our tax dollars?
While we are glad that the deal provides key funding increases for domestic programs, the truth is that those programs vie for funds from an increasingly shrinking pot. When our nation can’t manage to turn the lights on for the people of Puerto Rico, when we can’t help those suffering from opioid addiction get treatment, and when we can’t ensure education and healthcare to all of our citizens, how is it possible we can justify spending billions more on weapons that don’t work to fight enemies that don’t exist?
The U.S. military is already the best trained and equipped in world history, by many times over, and its budget is on average already higher than it was during the Cold War when we had millions more men and women in uniform.
The challenges our nation and the world face today are not problems that have a military solution. Throwing more money at the Pentagon, while we continue to gut the State Department, will only double down on the Trump administration’s violence-first approach to the challenges we face that has proven time and again to increase instability around the world.
We encourage members of Congress to reject this Pentagon giveaway, focussing instead on how American diplomacy can solve critical national security issues and allocating resources more appropriately.
###