What programs a 10% cut in military spending could buy
Californians are paying a staggering price for this excessive military spending. According to the National Priorities Project, the average California taxpayer paid the federal government $4,267 for the military in 2018.
For millions of Californians, times are tough, and the future looks tougher still. So far, California has seen over 325,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 7,000 deaths.
In the economic fallout, over 6 million of us have applied for unemployment insurance since the start of the pandemic. Many of them have yet to see a dime from the understaffed California Employment Development Department, which has struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of claims.
Meanwhile, a $600-per-week federal unemployment supplement is set to expire at the end of July, and the Republican-controlled Senate appears determined to let it expire rather than support a measure passed in the House of Representatives to extend it through January.
A look at the National Defense
Authorization Act will shed some light on the kind of spending Congress may be quicker to approve, namely, over $740 billion in Pentagon spending this year. If that seems like a lot, it’s because it really, really is.
The United States spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. For those wondering whether that kind of astronomical spending is somehow necessary for national security, it’s not.
In fact a recent report by the Costs of War initiative explains how the United States’ unique brand of commercialized militarism, in which more than half of U.S. military spending in 2019 went to private contractors, has significantly increased the cost of the country’s military operations.
Moreover, the endless wars supported by our massive military budget haven’t been making us safer. Despite spending over $5 trillion on war since 2001, global deaths from terrorism have increased, while social and economic forms of security such as a functioning health care system, pandemic preparedness and jobs programs have all gone underfunded.
Californians are paying a staggering price for this excessive military spending. According to the National Priorities Project, the average California taxpayer paid the federal government $4,267 for the military in 2018. That’s compared to averages of $1,247 on unemployment and labor programs, $609 for housing and community programs, and $398 for education.
Thankfully, some members of Congress have been organizing to prevent this egregious misallocation of resources and instead invest in the communities that need it most.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and Mark Pocan, D-Wis., are pushing for an amendment to the defense authorization act that would redirect 10% of the Pentagon budget to fund education, health care, child care and housing for communities facing poverty rates of 25% or higher.
Over 60 national civil society organizations recently sent a letter to the Senate in support of this long-overdue realignment of our national spending priorities.
To get a sense of what those cuts in Pentagon spending could mean for California, consider this: 10% of the roughly $100 billion Californians spent on the military in 2019 could cover the cost of employing roughly twothirds of the state’s elementary school teachers for a year, or the cost of low-income health care for 5.8 million children for a year.
The Senate is expected to vote on the amendment soon. If you think we should look after each other right now rather than throw more money into the dumpster fires of U.S. militarism, your senators need to hear from you.