The president’s budget request released today completely ignores the needs of ordinary people, instead choosing a laserlike focus on fighting wars and militarizing U.S. streets. 

The president’s budget request throws the vast wealth of this country in the hands of weapons contractors while providing almost nothing for struggling Americans. It requests a $445 billion, or 42 percent, increase for war, bringing the total war budget to an unprecedented $1.5 trillion. 

The U.S. is in the midst of an affordability crisis, with nearly half of people struggling to afford basic necessities. This week the president told Americans that the country can’t afford to help with things like Medicaid and childcare. Just last year, the president requested and received deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps that will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance and food assistance.

The president’s war on Iran has driven gas prices through the roof, and now he wants Americans to pay an even higher bill for his wars. A $1.5 trillion war budget will only pave the way for more and longer wars, more deaths of civilians abroad, and higher costs for people here. 

The president also doubles down on funding for his inhumane and unpopular mass deportation agenda, with billions in new funding for the mass deportation agencies ICE and CBP. This funding would come in addition to the $170 billion passed just last year that has enabled the deaths of migrants in detention centers, the detention of children, and the deaths of U.S. citizens at the hands of mass deportation agents.

At the same time, the president’s budget boasts of billions of dollars of cuts to domestic programs, including programs to end homelessness, food and health grants for people with disabilities, rural small business grants, low-income home heating assistance, and fair housing programs, among countless others. 

“The president looked at the country, with our rising gas prices and nearly half of us struggling to afford basic necessities, and decided what we really need is a bigger war budget. Not healthcare or childcare or relief from high prices or expensive housing, but a nearly bottomless budget for whatever wars his cronies and the contractors dream up next,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

“We deserve a budget that has no room for endless wars and lining weapons contractors’ pockets. Instead the president wants a budget that has no room for us,” Koshgarian said.