Next Week, Democrats Can Cut the Defense Budget. Let’s See Where Their Priorities Are.
A new amendment from Bernie Sanders gives Senate Democrats the opportunity to shift the Pentagon’s bloated budget to poor communities. Let’s see how many decide to invest in welfare instead of warfare.
US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks as Senate minority whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) listens at a news conference at the US Capitol June 23, 2020 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / Getty
In 2007, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994, the Iraq War was at its zenith. Ending the war was the top priority for progressives.
At that time, a centrist senior Democratic aide pulled me aside and told me that my lefty friends and I were being irrational. Democrats could not push to end the war in Iraq or, in fact, take any steps to roll back the ever-burgeoning Pentagon budget. Doing so would electorally weaken the party, condemning us to defeat. That, according to her, was the lesson of the post–Vietnam War era.
While ahistorical, that fear loomed large in post–September 11 Washington, DC. For the most part, Democrats have been participants in the rapid expansion of the military budget.
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