Polls say Americans should love the Build Back Better Act — but most are only hearing talking points about its price tag.

Source: Chart by National Priorities Project, data from USAspending.gov.  As Democrats negotiate the Build Back Better bill from $3.5 trillion (over ten years) down to $1.75 trillion over ten years, priorities like paid leave, free community college, and Medicare expansion for affordable prescriptions, dental, and vision care are all on...

Why is it controversial to spend on social programs but not the Pentagon? Or to subsidize the poor but not the rich?

 

Today the Congressional Budget Office released a new report, “Illustrative Options for National Defense Under a Smaller Defense Budget,” that outlines three different options for cutting funding for the Department of Defense by $1 trillion, or 14 percent, over the next ten years. 

Migrants are hit long before they migrate, before they reach the border, and often long after they cross it.

This week the House of Representatives is voting on the National Defense Authorization Act, the piece of legislation that sets the nation's military policy, and military budget. And, based on actions taken so far by the House Armed Services Committee, the House is positioned to approve nearly $780 billion in military spending. 

That's unless an effort to pass an amendment co-sponsored by Representative Barbara Lee and Representative Mark Pocan to cut the Pentagon budget by ten percent passes. 

Congress has the resources to invest in our community.

For just a fraction of what we’ve spent on militarization these last 20 years, we could start to make life much better.

Plans for a Just Transition away from defense industries do not need to be pulled out of thin air. The ongoing efforts to transition economies, workers, and communities out of the harmful fossil fuel economy provides insights into what works and what doesn’t. 

In 2020, the Pentagon budgeted $18.6 billion for its Afghanistan operations. That level of investment could pay up-front refugee relocation costs of $15,148 for 1.2 million people.