Congressional progressives must reject Biden's regressive budget

Military spending exploded during the Trump administration. The last defense bill Obama signed into law authorized $610 billion for the Pentagon; the final bill under Trump authorized $740.5 billion. Polling suggests relatively few Americans would consider this $130.5 billion surge appropriate. Even fewer would argue that Trump’s military spending spree didn’t go far enough. The Biden-Harris White House has argued just that.

President Biden proposed a $753 billion military budget in a preview of his first discretionary funding request earlier this month. This amounts to an increase of well over $12 billion, meaning that Biden boosted Pentagon funding by an amount roughly equivalent to CDC’s entire annual budget.

Put into the context of the announced military withdrawal from Afghanistan, what Biden is doing is withholding the peace dividend from the US working class. By investing Afghanistan war funds back into military empire, he’s doing nothing meaningful to bring an end to endless wars, either.

There is nothing progressive about Biden’s military budget request. Before the president releases his official budget request for next year, congressional Democrats need to make a unified, sustained effort to establish that in the public’s eye.

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