Military Spending Is Soaring, Even as Food Insecurity Reaches New Heights
As US military spending balloons to record levels, new data show that the number of US adults who don’t have enough to eat has jumped for the fourth straight month. The massive military budget is quite literally taking food out of people’s mouths.
Similar to how America funded its war on terror, the United States is underwriting its involvement in the war in Ukraine almost entirely with “emergency spending.” (Mustafa Ciftci / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
This summer, both chambers of Congress approved versions of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, authorizing a record-setting Pentagon budget of $886.3 billion. But military spending isn’t the only thing on the rise in the United States: food insecurity just reached its highest level since Joe Biden took office.
Recent data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey show that the number of US adults who don’t have enough to eat eclipsed twenty-seven million in July 2023 — 3.3 million more than in January 2021. And this is the fourth straight month of increasing hunger, the longest streak since the Household Pulse Survey began collecting data in April 2020.
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