Biden Proposes Massive Military Spending, to Private Contractors’ Delight
Joe Biden has requested more than $800 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year. His spending plan won’t make the world safer, but it will probably funnel more than $400 billion in public money to private sector firms.
Soldiers fire the US Army’s M1A2 SEPv3 tank at Fort Hood, Texas, on August 18, 2020. (Sergeant Calab Franklin / US Army via Flickr)
For the second year in a row, Joe Biden is planning on increasing the military budget.
The fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget request Biden will send to Congress this month reportedly proposes more than $800 billion in military spending; $773 billion for the Department of Defense (DOD) and most of the rest for nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy. Save for the stretch of military budgets between 2007 and 2011 that sponsored back-to-back troop surges — first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan — Biden’s plan would give more money to the Pentagon in FY 2023 than in any year since World War II.
A massive Pentagon budget entails a massive redistribution of wealth, and the primary recipient isn’t “our troops” as US politicians like to say. Instead, most of the DOD budget goes to for-profit companies: 55 percent of the $14.5 trillion Congress gave the Pentagon between FY 2002 and FY 2021 ended up going to private sector firms through contracts.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.