MARCH 10, 2023 BY DAVID SWANSON
How U.S. Military Spending Works
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 10, 2023
Here’s how this works each year.
1) Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to. If you look at U.S. military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for inflation), Obama’s 2011 record will probably fall this year. If you look at actual numbers, not adjusting for inflation, Biden has set a new record each year.
If you add in the free weapons for Ukraine, then, even adusting for inflation, the record fell this past year and will probably be broken again in the coming year.
You’ll hear all sorts of different numbers, depending on what’s included. Most used is probably $886 billion for what Biden has just proposed, which includes the military, the nuclear weapons, and some of “Homeland Security.” In the absence of massive public pressure on a topic the public hardly knows exists, we can count on an increase by Congress, plus major new piles of free weapons to Ukraine. For the first time, U.S. military spending (not counting various secret spending, veterans spending, etc.) will likely top $950 billion as predicted here.
https://warisacrime.org/2023/03/10/how-u-s-military-spending-works/
