The Pentagon budget effectively steals government benefits from ordinary Americans. But don’t count on corporate media or lawmakers to even recognize, let alone debate, this issue.

by Sonali Kolhatkar

An intense debate over Build Back Better (BBB) ​​legislation has sparked harsh lectures from budget conservatives on government spending. The legislation, which depends on the political balance between progressive lawmakers and conservative Democrats like Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, costs $ 1.75 trillion over 10 years in its current form, which equates to $ 175 billion per year.

Compare that to President Joe Biden’s proposed military budget spending of $ 753 billion for fiscal 2022. According to the Security Policy Reform Institute, “This represents an increase of over $ 12 billion, which means Biden has increased funding the Pentagon in an amount roughly equivalent to the CDC’s entire annual budget. “

Extrapolating this figure over 10 years while taking into account projected annual increases – a good guess given that the military budget almost never loses its annual increase – predicts that U.S. taxpayers will put nearly $ 8 trillion on the budget. “defense” slice of our budget pie in the coming decade.

Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, told me in an interview that “it’s amazing how hydraulic the system is.” By that he meant “they cut $ 25 billion for home care” from the BBB bill. Meanwhile, he said, “Congress increased Biden’s increase in the military budget by $ 25 billion at about the same time.”

While the costs of the recently passed infrastructure finance bill that Biden enacted and the BBB legislation yet to be passed have been discussed in major headlines and in heated debates on television networks, there is no There is not a single word from these same sources on the bloated military budget, the size of which continues to swell from year to year.

For example, that late September Washington Post article titled “Biden, Pelosi in Late Race to Save $ 1,000 Billion in Infrastructure” was one of many similarly billed articles in major outlets. sale until late summer and early fall.

Imagine a headline implicitly denigrating Pentagon funding. The fact that the size of the military budget is more than four times the size of BBB legislation should be posted in our newspapers. But we can’t imagine seeing such ideas being discussed in the mainstream because the military budget is seen as sacrosanct – and not just by most lawmakers but also by the corporate media.

Semler pointed out that there are “two concepts of spending – social spending and military spending – which operate under two distinct sets of spending rules.”

In the wake of national debates over the costs of legislation that directly benefits the American people, the tacit acceptance of a military budget many times the cost of social spending is shocking, but only to those who pay close attention to it. or who read independent media articles.

An example of fair reporting is the article by Huffington Post writer Akbar Shahid Ahmed, whose headline reads in part: “Pentagon budget costs 4 times more than Biden’s social policy bill.”

Another example is the article by Prakash Nanda published in a non-American newspaper called EurAsian Times, and titled: “Joe Biden’s $ 778 billion defense budget goes unnoticed, but his $ 170 billion social agenda triggers a huge debate ”.

No such headline has appeared in the mainstream American media.

It’s not like there is no debate in the country about our spending priorities. If corporate media like the Washington Post took inspiration from progressive lawmakers like Bernie Sanders, they might have reported on the Vermont senator’s recent tweet, noting how “It’s beyond the absurd that As our nation continues to spend more on the military than the next 12 COMBINED nations, we are told over and over again that we cannot afford to invest in the needs of working people here at home.

But instead, the Post and other media have continually amplified the desires and demands of Tory Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) story after story without following up on Manchin’s willingness to spend money. billion dollars for the Pentagon. An article highlighting the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives and their blanket endorsement of military spending would practically write itself. Efforts must be made to avoid expressing such a story.

Even some US residents see the absurdity of silence on the military budget. Alice C. McCain, living in Washington state, wrote a letter to a local newspaper called the Kitsap Sun questioning the size of the military budget. She could see the clear contrast in the priorities, writing: “Some of the same people who denounce the BBB plan as too expensive are anxious to pass a bill giving the Pentagon $ 778 billion for a year, or nearly $ 8 billion. Trillion dollars over ten years. “

She categorically asks, “Why is it so difficult to spend money for our country and its people, yet so easy to distribute money for our military?” His question is one the media have wisely avoided for years.

Organizations and think tanks like the Project on Government Oversight, the National Priorities Project, and the Semler’s Security Policy Reform Institute routinely highlight the Pentagon’s unjustifiable budget, offering rich statistical comparisons, none of which seem good enough for mainstream media seriously.

Ultimately, the media seem invested in the same kind of imperialist ambitions as politicians. Semler pointed out how “Biden’s fear of taking office was that the debate that he and [former President Donald] Trump had on who could be harder, and more “manly” on China, in the run-up to the general election, it would trickle down to Biden’s policies. “

This fear was justified. In June, Biden signed an executive order citing “the threat posed by the military-industrial complex of the People’s Republic of China,” and continued to stir up anti-Chinese sentiment while proposing an increase in the military budget. The Post and other corporate media dutifully back the logic of increasing the Pentagon’s budget with fear-mongering stories about China’s expanding nuclear arsenal.

“Social spending could follow the same rules as military spending in that there is always enough money,” Semler said. “But because Congress chooses to spend only a certain amount [on social spending], indeed, military spending steals social spending. Imagine seeing a front page story in our mainstream media reflecting such a radical and yet blatantly obvious notion.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali”, a television and radio show broadcast on Free Speech TV and Pacifica. She is a writing researcher for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute.