Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Is a Huge Win for the Military-Industrial Complex
July 3, 2025
Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Is a Huge Win for the Military-Industrial Complex
While weapons contractors will gorge on a huge new infusion of cash, military personnel, past and present, are clearly going to be neglected.
William D. Hartung
A Boeing B52H bomber is pictured flying in August 2020. (Rob Reedman / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big, beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the top 5 percent of taxpayers with roughly $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.
Over the next few years, the same bill will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring toward a record $1 trillion. In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.
Pentagon Pork and the People It Harms
The bill, passed by the House of Representatives and at present under consideration in the Senate, would allocate tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She explained exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:
Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/big-beautiful-bill-military-industrial-complex/#
