Budget Matters Blog


ICE Out of Target: Why a Familiar Store Is at the Center of Nationwide Protests

Across the country, people are beginning to ask a hard question: what does it mean to shop at a company that is cooperating with ICE and Border Patrol?


Congress Doubled ICE & CBP Budgets and Cut Legal Immigration

If legislators funded ICE and CBP at those levels for the current year, combined with funding from the Big Bad Bill, the annual budgets for those agencies would total $64.9 billion (assuming the Big Bad Bill funds are spent equally over the 51 months they’re available). That amounts to a 92 percent increase over the previous highest funding level for the agencies, which was $33.8 billion in FY 2019;  a 209 percent increase since FY 2024; and a 441 percent increase since the creation of ICE in FY 2002.


Trump wants $1.5 Trillion for War. Here are eleven necessary programs that cost $1.5 Trillion.

What this country needs is clear: not more money for an immoral, unaccountable war fund, but more money to actually improve lives for people everywhere.


From ICE Brutality to the Invasion of Venezuela, People Say No to Trump’s Militarism

Across the country, communities are calling out the administration’s lawlessness - both in its brutal immigration enforcement and its reckless intervention in another country.


The Cost of Just One Aircraft in the Venezuela Invasion: $91,330 per hour

The MAGA regime has cut critical services for families while spending untold millions on imperialist wars.


The Clock Is Ticking: Invest in the Planet, Not the Pentagon

At the 10 year anniversary of the Paris Agreement, U.S. climate commitments are being swallowed up by military spending.


Ten Examples of MAGA’s Militarized Excess in 2025

As the first year of Trump’s second term comes to a close, here are ten examples of MAGA’S excessive, wasteful, inhumane, and unstrategic militarized spending in 2025. 


10 Years Since the Paris Agreement: $79 Billion to Finance Foreign Arms Sales VS. $2 Billion for Green Climate Fund

The Paris Agreement, adopted on December 12, 2015, was supposed to catalyze global investment in climate finance to assist the world’s most vulnerable and historically exploited countries combat the worsening climate crisis. Instead, over the past decade, Congress has approved roughly 40 times more taxpayer dollars to subsidize weapons companies than support...


Don't Give the Pentagon $1 Trillion

The annual military spending bill paves the way for the first $1-trillion war budget since World War II, by authorizing more than $900 billion for the Pentagon on top of the $156 billion approved by Congress earlier this year.


7 Progressive Policy Wins for Human Needs Over Militarism

This Election Day, progressive ideas swept the polls this month on Election Day. Across multiple elections at the state and local government levels, voters chose pro-people and planet agendas over militarism, fossil fuels, and billionaire corporate interests.